First, I am going to start my saying that while I have several New Year’s Goals, none of them are to improve my Blog Posting Regularity. Perhaps it should be, but it isn’t. Instead I am resolved to rewite second drafts on two different stories; write a short story for competition submission and finish Left 4 Dead 2. Anyway, all that is completely unrelated to my post.
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It was supposed to be so good. It was supposed to be an adventure in the west, a story filled with cowboys, steampunk, and magic.
For some inexplicable reason I was convinced I just needed to read this book. I had to have it! No other story would satisfy this craving. By the end I was desperate.
A book, written by a reasonably popular author should not be that difficult to procure. However the acquisition was a trial in and of itself. The book in question was not to be found in any local book stores. There was no copy held in the library. And my request for the library to order this book went unheeded. Finally, in desperation I broke down and purchased the novel and had it shipped to the nearest book store. For two weeks I waited in anxious anticipation until finally it arrived. Until finally this weekend I could read my book. Until my dreams ended abruptly with ridiculously dumb vampires and a story that didn’t go anywhere.
The Damnation Affair by Lilith Saint Crow is the third book in the same world as the Clare and Bannon Series. The Clare & Bannon Series is set in an alternate Victoria world swirling with magic and mechanisms. An increasingly popular subgenera of steampunk fantasy which I have read of lately. The Clare and Bannon novels have a distinctly Sherlock Holmes vibe and Dr. Watson to them. I liked the first book well enough to read the second in the series. They were fine. A little too much magic – which seemed more than a bit silly. Oh and the mentath’s – the supposed antithesis of magic as these individuals were all about logic – were simply ridiculous. The conclusions a mentath made was based on such little information it was wildly improbable. Ultimately, the mentaths were mental mages instead of traditional magic weilding sorcerers.
But that is a small aside, as the mentaths do not appear in the third book – The Damnation Affair. And the sorcerors magic apparently works different on the new continenet – for ‘reasons’. This was a cowboy-zombie book taking place in the Wild West of the New World. It could have been good. It should have been brilliant, after all the writing had all the flavour of the times. Flavour is important to the writing a great story. A historical piece is quickly ruined by the use of modern language. If I could point to one good thing about this book, it was the use of a western drawl by the citizens of Damnation. But in the end the language was not enough to save me from an otherwise disappointing story.
I knew the story had zombies, which are regularly a turn off. However I was willing to overlook this little hiccup for the rest of the world. I craved that New World feel, the rough and tumble of frontier living, the struggle to overcome the land and all the varied obstacles. I was even anticipating a twist on technology, the creative use of mechanicals in a land not constrained by thousands of generations of Society.
What I had was a nod to the walking dead, a town with potential – yet poorly described or explored, a romance between two orphaned characters (and yes, that is sad) and all that topped off with a demon in the hills capable of creating vampires. Really where did the vampires come from? And WHY?
There were so many other things the author could have done. Granted every idea that sprang to mind from her pages was already a well-used cliché, but this was a mess. A rather slow to build mess with threads hanging loose at every turn. The Chinese were tossed in without regard to purpose. The magic was convoluted. The rage of some characters against the secret order of something was left completely unexplained. The feisty female doesn’t really do anything (a striking injustice to the character). Even the argument that she brings civilization from the East loses weight when one considers that the conflicts she faces just sort of fade into the background like hazy mirages. The battle of the undead lacked the big punch one would expect from the set up. And the Sheriff tosses aside every belief he has ever held for a pair of brown eyes that don’t appear to lose their luster from being buried in the dirt.
What you don’t see is the dozen of streets hidden behind the unprepossessing façade of this ‘main street’.
The town which is described as a single street with some half dozen buildings lining the two sides, blossoms suddenly in the second half of the book into a place big enough to house an unwanted portion of the populace in a completely different section. Really, where did these side-streets spring from?
One of the characters introduced as a villain in the first half of the book, is turned into another deputy by the end of the story for one random deed. Incidently, they never explain the shady dealings with that character. Just suddenly we are to accept him as one of the good guys – as much as the men in this town of Danmanation, plagued by the walking dead can be considered good.
I wanted to love this book. I read it with care I rarely afford my novels. I read it is slowly (for me) talking a solid 24 hours to finish. But the vampires were one straw too many and now I am left with two hundred pages of broken dreams and crushed hopes.
I desperately hope this is not foreshadowing of this year’s releases. Please, let the next book I read be better. Please…
