In a France devastated by the Black Death and by encroaching English armies, excommunicated knight turned brigand Thomas struggles just to survive
one more day, though he finds it harder and harder to remember why he needs to go on living at all. He's already lost everything that ever mattered
to him - his title, his lands, his wife, his honor - and the horrors he witnesses and is party to make him feel like he's living through the end of
days. Then he finds the girl in the tree. She is filled with a strange light and stranger purpose, as if she has been touched by a higher power...
but in a world where devils walk abroad at night and Lucifer's army again storms the walls of Heaven while God stands either helpless or indifferent,
how is Thomas to know whether that higher power is good or evil? Nevertheless, he finds himself traveling with her, witnessing miracles and
atrocities, on the way to either ultimate salvation or eternal damnation.
Review
I've read two books by Buehlman previously and been very impressed by both, so when I heard this one mentioned favorably on a podcast I listen to,
I decided to give this title a try. As in his other works, Buehlman does not pull his punches, and in fact leans into them with gusto: this is not a
story for the squeamish, for all that the horrors ultimately serve the greater story and atmosphere. Both the bleakness of a plague-riddled medieval
Europe and the twisted visions of medieval ideas of Hell and damnation (and the equally terrifying inhumanity and might of Heaven's angels) are on
full display, a surreal landscape both physical and spiritual for the characters to navigate and in which they often (and inevitably) lose their way.
Thomas, first wounded gravely in battle and then unjustly stripped of both his lands and his hope of Heaven, has wrapped himself fully in the
darkness and misery that surrounds him, but deep down has a core of inner goodness that even he cannot deny forever. The girl, clearly an instrument
of forces beyond him, could be either evil or good, but it almost doesn't matter, as she gives him a purpose that he's been lacking too long,
becoming a daughter figure who brings out his vestigial better nature. She herself does not precisely understand her own role in the greater quest,
her childish naivete slowly worn down but never completely lost. Along the way, they gain and lose companions, enduring numerous setbacks and
encounters with enemies human and otherwise, all while the devils around them grow stronger and more emboldened as humans often seem all too eager to
indulge their own dark sides. At times reality melts and twists into nightmarish surreality, where the lines between what is happening and what is
imagined are blurred to the point of nonexistence. There is, naturally, a strong religious vein running through the story, but it manages not to be
as preachy and judgmental as many such stories. For all the darkness and raw, visceral horror, I devoured this book at a rate I haven't managed in
quite some time (audiobooks notwithstanding).
In the years after the goblin wars devastated the lands of men, wiping out generations of girls and boys sent to battle and even seeing the
land's horses fall to some foul goblin plague like the ones they spread against people, a thief still has to earn a living. This is especially
true if, like Kinch, they still owe the Guild of Takers for their training, and with the Guild's agents in most every human realm, there's no
running out on a debt. Which is why the wiry thief was waiting in the woods with a gang of half-baked bandits looking for a likely mark...
only the woman they target is no fainting flower. She's a foreign swordswoman, veteran of the wars and sworn disciple of the goddess of death,
and though Kinch escapes with his life, fate will see their paths cross again. For the Guild has devised a new way for Kinch to pay back his
debt: seek out the woman Galta and join her on her quest to find a lost princess in a realm now under assault from giants. Only the Guild
refuses to tell him what he's to do when they find her, and he'd bet his black tongue they have no interest in restoring her to her throne, as
Galta means to do. He's done a lot of dark deeds in his day, more than his share some might say, but this is a line he won't willingly cross -
even if defiance will bring down every curse and every assassin of the Guild upon his head. Good thing he's known for his luck - only luck has
a way of running out just when you need it most...
Review
I'd heard many good things about this book, and finally found the audiobook title available through Overdrive, narrated by the author. It
happily lived up to its hype, and then some. Buehlman establishes a dark and filth-stained world of shady guilds and squabbling powers and
clashing cultures and magic reminiscent of old epic sagas, where witches wear the legs of dead men and an old blind cat can carry a hidden
assassin tattooed with magic spells. In a world like this, heroes are nearly as rare as the dying horses, a blow that everyone, even those born
after the plague that wiped them out, still feels acutely. It's a world that belongs instead to the backstabber and the thief, the scarred
veteran who cannot let go and the shrinking coward who rationalizes their own inaction and misdeeds. Kinch is just a young man from a conquered
people struggling (and failing) to keep ahead of the perpetual debt that the Guild of Takers uses to keep their people leashed, but there's
just enough vestigal decency and defiance in him to try, on occasion, to do the right thing, even if it backfires at least as often as not.
Galta has the spirit of a noble knight, entrusted with a grand quest for her nation, but even she is not entirely above the muck and the gray
morality that permeates the broken land. They pick up traveling companions along the way, including a witch in training and a rival from Kinch's
homeland who knows the thief for the coward he is. There's action, a fair bit of it violent, and a vein of dark humor from the first page that
doesn't significantly let up throughout the tale. There's also tears and sacrifice and failure, hidden facets to just about everyone and
everything (even the goblins and the giants), and magic aplenty. The whole was a thoroughly enjoyable and immersive tale, one that works
reasonably well as a standalone but which leaves several threads for the impending sequel. I think I may have to buy myself a print copy of this
one for rereading, which, given my exceptionally limited physical shelf space and book budget these days, is saying something...
1978 New York City is a happening place, with night clubs and disco and a lively underground - not to mention the vampires. Since being
turned as a spoiled brat of a 14-year-old some decades earlier, vampire Joey Peacock has had a fine time, prowling bars and dance floors
and keeping up on modern sitcoms (even though his closest vampire friend, bookish philosopher Cvetko, insists television will rot his
brain). So long as he takes care not to "peel" (kill) too many mortals or endanger his peers or their leader, the fiery Irishwoman
Margaret, afterlife is good. Since nothing short of immolation, decapitation, or a stake through the heart will kill him permanently, Joey
figures he has essentially forever to party... until the night on the subway when he sees an unsettling pair of little children - children
who appear to be stalking and hypnotizing mortals, just like vampires. But what kind of monster turns young children - and are these
newcomers friends of the local vampire community or the deadliest of foes?
Review
As in his other books (the ones I've read, at least), Buehlman does not pull punches or spare lives (or bloodshed) in spinning a solid
horror tale, this one set firmly in the late-70's Big Apple - perfect hunting grounds for the undead, especially the undead who have a taste
for disco and rock music and cheesy television. Buehlman's vampires are not the "nice" ones popularized in modern romance crossovers, drawing
instead on their original, darker, predatory roots; though they are capable of friendship and love in limited ways, they're far more
interested in personal short-term pleasures and slaking their hunger, where dominating human wills and drinking blood is at least as
erotically satisfying as sex. For all that he's unapologetic about his life, Joey is just as happy hypnotizing victims into "donations" of
blood without resorting to draining them dry; indeed, it's considered bad form to kill too many victims, if more because of the potential
headache of police involvement/investigation than about anything like moral constraints about murder in general. He's not an old enough
vampire to have the weight of ages and downsides to his new condition truly hit home, like those vampires who succumb to "night fever" and
eventually commit suicide by sunshine, but he's old enough to recognize the children as something potentially destabilizing to what passes
for the vampire neighborhood... something hinting at an enemy more evil than his own brand of vampire, even though such distinctions - even
a "good" vampire can at best be described as "not quite as monstrous as theoretically possible" - can seem like splitting an already-fine
hair. The true threat becomes all too apparent as the story unfolds, leaving Joey on the run and running out of places to hide and people to
turn to. Things take increasingly dark turns, some of which comes across as grinding in the gore, before an ending that feels a bit less
revelatory and a bit more like an author getting a touch too clever for his own good; one too many whiplashes kept it from rising above four
stars (and came close to knocking it down to three and a half). On the other hand, Buehlman again succeeds in capturing a time and a place
and complex characters, which helped buoy the book against an ending that felt like it was trying too hard for the Shock And Awe factor.
It was an ordinary night on the road in late 1960's America, and the Lamb family was driving home under the light of a golden-orange
rising moon... until a horror beyond imagining shattered their happiness and left only young wife and mother Judith alive. In the moments
before the crash that would end her husband's life, she got a good look at the people in the other car - the man with the cat-bright eyes
and long fangs who pulled her young son from his seat through the open window, a memory seared into her brain even when nobody else
believes her. But even as she is told, again and again, how only a miracle could have spared her, she knows that she has looked into the
eyes of pure evil.
Years later, dedicating herself to the service of God as a nun, she is contacted by a stranger who actually believes her - a man who offers
her a chance to hunt down and end the monsters who took her son and her happiness, a pack of vampires known as the Suicide Motor Club who
use roadside "accidents" as cover for their kills. But is this secretive group, the Bereaved, truly a path to peace and salvation... and,
if so, what is she to make of the unusual vampire who offers to help her in her quest?
Review
Tangentially connected to Buehlman's The Lesser Dead through shared vampire lore and references to one character in particular,
The Suicide Motor Club largely stands on its own, a story of inhuman predators and flawed people and the now-faded heyday of
American muscle cars on the open roads.
Judith Lamb starts out, if not entirely happy with her lot - her marriage is best described as "complicated" - then reasonably content,
enough that the loss of her pre-crash life cuts deep into her soul in a wound that will never truly heal. She turns eventually to faith,
leaning into a belief she has carried since childhood as she struggles to make sense of not only her survival but of the horrific things
she saw snatch her boy literally from her grasp, and even if she ultimately must walk her own path and find her own way to redemption
outside the convent, she carries the strength of her belief into the coming battle. It is not a simplistic thing, her faith in her God, a
faith tested not only by what she sees among the Bereaved and in her prophetic visions but also by her interactions with Clayton, a
vampire who defies most everything she thought she knew about the undead. Clayton himself is a complicated figure, a vampire who struggles
to retain some restraint even as he is surrounded by those who gleefully embrace their monstrous natures and the liberty it gives them to
be the worst abominations they can be. (As with Buehlman's other titles, punches are not pulled and quarter is not given; these are
bloodthirsty, depraved vampires to whom humans are not just prey of necessity but the most deliciously fragile toys to torment and smash
and discard at leisure.) The story moves between Judith's struggles and the depredation of the Suicide Motor Club as they crisscross the
country, racking up a small mountain's worth of collateral damage, before the inevitable confrontation... one that doesn't play out as
anyone expects, in a climax that threatens to overplay its tension before finally coming to an ending that leaves some ambiguous threads
dangling. I preferred this book's wrapup to the one in The Lesser Dead, even with that ambiguity and sense that there is more to
tell.
The whole makes for a nicely twisted story of monsters and humans, belief and disbelief, and the often twisted, ever-shifting lines between
good and evil, even within the same individual.
Scarred by the Great War and academically ruined when he had an affair with his then-married current fiancee Eudora, Frank Nichols was in
desperate need of a fresh start, somewhere - anywhere - to rebuild a life with the woman he loves. The letter from the aunt he never knew,
leaving him control of the long-abandoned Savoyard Plantation in Georgia, was a lifeline, for all that the late woman's final letter warned
him to simply sell the property without ever going there himself. Instead, Frank and Eudora pack up their Model A and head to the small town
of Whitbrow, not far from the property. Like many small towns, it's an insular community with some peculiar local legends and customs, such
as driving two pigs into the woods across the river every full moon, but it seems harmless enough. Frank even sets his mind to settling in
and writing a book about the Savoyard, whose master - his ancestor - was notorious for cruelty even among his cruel peers and where the
slaves rose up in a bloody and gruesome revolt to end his reign of terror after the Confederacy's fall. But from the start Frank gets
warnings and signs to leave the ghosts of the past alone, and to avoid the ill-omened woods across the river where the old ruins stand... and
where something dark and malevolent may still lurk today, something ever hungry for fresh blood...
Review
I was very impressed with Buehlman's fantasy novel The Blacktongue Thief and am eagerly awaiting the sequel, but in the meantime I
figured it was worth my while to explore his other works. While lacking the dark humor of The Blacktongue Thief, Those Across the
River is still an excellent, bleak, and occasionally twisted tale of monsters and secrets and scars, physical and psychological, that
reach out of the past to consume the present and the future.
Frank starts with more than ample scars on his body and mind, suffering from post-traumatic stress after his time in the trenches of World War
I. His would-be wife Eudora, once the wife of his mentor and fellow professor in his old university job, is among the few who can handle his
moods and frequent nightly screaming fits; it is clear from the start that she and Frank are truly in love, not merely in lust, for all that
their affair (and her divorce) destroyed both of their reputations. Coming to Whitbrow is the change of scenery they both need; she can get a
job teaching at the small school, while Frank works on landing another professorship and tries to write the story of his notorious ancestor, a
figure who both repels and oddly fascinates him. In town, they find an assortment of small town characters, as well as a secret that has
lingered since the days of the Savoyard Plantation's heyday, a secret tied to the odd pig festival that lean times finally end... only for the
townsfolk to be reminded of why the sacrifice has been needed all these years. Frank and Eudora both get pulled far deeper into the mystery
than either intended, doomed almost from the start by a certain air of fate unfolding. Even when they get a chance to leave, they realize it's
too late to avoid what's coming, for them and the whole of Whitbrow. The tale unfolds under a dark cloud that only grows darker with every
chapter, managing to draw out the suspense without making me feel like I was being strung along, in part because it delivers on its ominous
warnings and foreshadowing in full (and then some).
The squeamish are advised to steer clear; blood, death, and mutilations abound, especially as things pick up toward a climax that tests Frank
and Eudora's bond to the breaking point. All through the tale are themes of the deep scars left by the brutality of slavery and how easily
people can become the very monsters they fear and despise, generation after generation. By the end, it has taken the reader on a truly harrowing
journey through one man's personal, inescapable Hell. Very well written and compelling, though not for the faint of heart.
