Order
“Dark Currents” HERE
Read
An Excerpt HERE
Dark Currents (Published October 2, 2012 by Roc) is the start of
Jacqueline Carey's new urban fantasy
series, Agent of Hel. (That's Hel
the Norse goddess, mind you, not the infernal dimension.) Carey is most famous for the Kushiel's
Legacy series, but she's got several others out there. Her website says
there are two forthcoming books in this new series, so we've probably got a
trilogy on our hands.
Our
protagonist, Daisy, is hell-spawn
(yes, the infernal kind this time) courtesy of an accident with an ouija board.
However, she doesn't have any fancy powers. She knows how the eldritch
community works, she's sensitive to the seven deadlies, and she's got a tail.
She could have all the power she
wanted, if she invited her demonic father to Earth and started the apocalypse.
However, despite all his tempting, she hasn't — yet. Daisy lives in Hel's territory
on earth and works as Hel's liaison
between the eldritch and human communities.
In
terms of world-building, the setting is a catch-all for mythology. Any mythos
could be real, somewhere, and none are more prominent than any others. Hel may be head goddess in Daisy's small town, but there are
fairies, vampires, trolls, werewolves, ghouls, and mermaids; there are tarot
and runic readings. Happily for me, although vampires are a major player in
town, they aren't in this book: instead, Carey
focuses more on ghouls. Her interpretation is interesting, like vampires that
feed on emotions instead of blood, and it's pretty cool. It's also incredibly
relevant to some of the problems Daisy deals
with by virtue of being hell-spawn.
The
story does follow the now classic urban fantasy set-up of our protagonist
investigating a murder. Daisy is
with the police department in a semi-official capacity, but she isn't actually
a detective; since she isn't the lead on the investigation, Carey gets to skip on most of the
police procedural details.
I
appreciated that there was no clear love interest. By the end of the book, Daisy is sort of interested in three
different people who may or may not be romantically interested in her. I like
this because it felt real: she has no idea what's going on with any of them,
and the book isn't obviously pushing her into a relationship with any or all of
them.
I
also really liked all the other subplots in this book. There's an investigation
going on, but life doesn't stop: her best friend still has family problems, Daisy still visits her mother, and she
interacts with people from earlier in her life who don't have any bearing on
the investigation. Daisy had
relationships with people in town that suggested a lot about her character and
gave her more of a sense of history, as well as fleshing out the world. I point
this out because too many stories have a token friend or family member that is
the “normal” person in the protagonist's life, and I think Carey avoided that problem neatly and made her solution help her
besides.
In
the end, it was obvious that none of Daisy's
contacts, physical strength, or investigative acumen were going to save
her, and Carey sneakily spent the
whole book ensuring that she had exactly what she needed to be a true hero.
The
trappings may be familiar to urban fantasy readers, but I think Jacqueline Carey is doing something special
with Dark Currents. The fantastic is
the dressing to tackle serious, “mundane” issues, and it makes for a compelling
read.
12:00 AM | 
Posted by
Robert |
Labels:
urban fantasy
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1 comments:
While I liked this novel, it didn't have nearly the depth or intrigue that I've grown used to from Jacqueline Carey. While I applaud her for her foray into a new genre (for her), I felt that there just wasn't enough intensity to the story. While I like her protagonist, Daisy, she's somewhat predictable and pales in comparison to the Outcast, Stefan, about whom there remains a great deal of mystery. I look forward to finding out more about him in the subsequent two novels in this trilogy and I hope that encounters between him and Daisy prove to be more than a dance around the truths they each harbor.