Chuck Wendig already writes one of the best \u2018almost\u2019 urban fantasy novels in the Miriam Black books, so I had high hopes for the Blue Blazes. \u00a0Unfortunately, this one gets a bit of a shrug. \u00a0There is a lot to love here, particularly the setting: New York with a giant hell underneath it that is a bit of a cross between a lost D&D dungeon, a mine, and a drug plantation. \u00a0The interaction between the city and the underworld through it\u2019s sewers, aquifers, and subways, is lovingly detailed and well realised. \u00a0Similarly, the denizens of the underworld, and the organisations that interact with them, the diggers who hold them off, and the gangsters who mine drugs feel like a real milieu.<\/p>\n
Where the wheels fall off is in the main character. \u00a0It\u2019s laudable trying to build an urban fantasy novel off a straight bruiser, and Mookie Pearl is a character with a lot of strength and limited finesse. \u00a0But this relegates all attempts to give the character depth to feeling tacked on, and extrinsic to his being. \u00a0For example his love of high end charcuterie is at odds with a guy who literally shovels his food into his mouth at a buffet.<\/p>\n
This is exacerbated by the start of the novel. \u00a0One of my recurring complaints with later books in a series is that there is a lot of telling the reader about things that happened previously. \u00a0This is the first time I\u2019ve seen the technique applied to the first book in a series, and if it\u2019s annoying in book four of a series, my goodness if it isn\u2019t the worst in the series opener. \u00a0There is literally a whole plot involving Mookie\u2019s daughter that has to be explained to the reader multiple times for context, often in authorial exposition that is left to flop around and die on the page. Chuck Wendig already writes one of the best \u2018almost\u2019 urban fantasy novels in the Miriam Black books, so I had high hopes for the Blue Blazes. Unfortunately, this one gets a bit of a shrug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8],"tags":[13,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAll in all, a great setting with interesting world building is largely cancelled out by a horrible start and a limited main character. \u00a0OK, I guess?<\/strong><\/em><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"