Post by laurenscharhag on Oct 8, 2013 14:37:32 GMT -6
As a fan of the Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim novels, I jumped at the chance to pick up a copy of his newest novel, a YA horror/fantasy called Dead Set.
If Neil Gaiman and Chuck Palahniuk had a love child, it would look something like Dead Set. A young heroine has been dropped into a Gaiman scenario. The liberal sprinkling of myth and folklore, from Sumer to Greece to the Brothers Grimm, is also very Gaiman-esque. But the story has a Palahniuk-like edge, the heroine, Palahniuk pluck (I was reminded of Madison Spencer from Damned). There are plenty of other elements here, too—I saw shades of The Crow in this story, with its grungy alt rock patina. Kadrey hearkens back to his other works, with the seedy California setting, its unique subculture of hipsters and lowlifes. I saw Spirited Away. I saw The Wizard of Oz, to which Kadrey openly tips his hat. I saw St. Teresa of Avila.
But the heart of the story is all Kadrey. He masterfully blends these components into a thrillingly new, original tale. The story centers around Zoe, our 16-year-old protagonist. Zoe was born into a household where it’s all punk rock all the time. Punk is the country, the language and the religion. Zoe and her folks are vinyl, vintage rock T-shirts and Chuck Taylors. Once upon a time, Zoe’s father was deep into the L.A. punk scene-- he played in a band and later managed his own club. But when Zoe was born, he settled down and turned respectable-- got the job, got the house in the burbs. Zoe’s mom, a former artist and fierce rocker babe in her own right, decided to become a homemaker.
But the universe pitches their little nuclear family unit a nasty curveball when Zoe’s father drops dead of a heart attack. A series of sadly plausible legal snafus prevent Zoe and her mom from receiving any sort of benefits. Broke and foreclosed on, they have to move to a cruddy apartment in the Big City. Zoe’s mother can’t find a job. Zoe finds herself facing the problems that impoverished, urban kids face: no money to afford a proper cell phone. Creepy indigents tagging along as she walks down the street, perverts in the public library. Zoe’s new school is a few blocks away from a strip club. Fast food for dinner every night.
All this, on top of being the new kid, on top of grieving for her father—well, it’s no wonder that Zoe has gone through a bout of self-harm, (she’s a cutter). Throw in the fact that Zoe has always had vivid dreams about a tree house and a boy named Valentine, who she calls her “dream brother,” and it really doesn’t come as any big shock that she’s spent some time undergoing psychiatric treatment.
And by the way, Kadrey covers most of this in the first chapter. It’s hard not to admire that kind of economy.
So. The stage is set. You’ve got your heroine, a sensitive, imaginative, confused young girl. She’s lonely. She’s under extreme stress. All she thinks about is death. Could she be anymore ripe for the full-on I Never Promised You a Rose Garden-type break with reality?
I think not. And it’s expected, in a story like this, to introduce the unreliable narrator trope. We expect to go into this wondering if our girl is really experiencing this stuff, or if she’s just gone clean off her rocker. But let me just take this moment to say I loved Zoe. She’s tough, persistent and compassionate. I was impressed that Kadrey could delve so believably into the mind of a teenage girl. I love how normal she is—she likes school okay, most of the time. She and her mom aren’t getting along so great right now, but you know that deep down, they care about each other. While she spares boys a thought, she’s more focused on herself and her family situation. In many ways, Zoe is still just a kid—when she dreams of Valentine, they play in their tree house and throw almonds at each other. Overall, she’s a very good person—just what a heroine ought to be.
When her particular white rabbit/cyclone/sprinkler of fairy dust appears, it comes in the most delightfully new, unexpected form: a record shop. Of course Zoe would go into an old record store. Of course she would seek out comfort and familiarity in a place filled with turntables and old tunes. She even finds an old album cover that her mother designed back in the day.
She also discovers the proprietor. The name of the record store is Ammut’s (“Ammut Records: Rare, Used & Lost.” Did I mention that Zoe has also just watched a documentary on ancient Egypt?), but he tells her to call him Emmett. While perusing Emmett’s merchandise, Zoe stumbles onto a back room.
It’s a very special back room. The records don’t look like regular records, and a cone of strange incense perfumes the air. Ammut/Emmett tells her that not just anybody would find their way to it. These records, he explains, are not music, but records of lives, of people who have passed on. (Akashic records—geddit?) When you listen to the music on a special machine, called an Animagraph, you can experience everything that person experienced.
For example, Zoe straps on the Animagraph and blasts back in time to 1902 Virginia, where she gets to experience the life of a woman named Caroline. It’s a pretty crazy trip.
You can already see where this is going. Zoe will want to see her father’s record.
And, from there, it just gets weirder. It also gets more excellent. I don’t want to give too much away—I want the reader to experience this book just as I did, with no knowledge or expectations, so the magic just washes over you. I will say that, of course, Emmett is not what he appears to be. Nor does he share his wonders with Zoe for free. He demands payment.
From Emmett’s store, Zoe embarks on a long, dangerous journey that takes her to the underworld, a land called Iphigene. There, she reunites with her father. She meets Valentine, who is, of course, more than just a dream figure. She also confronts terrifying evils, mainly in the form of Queen Hecate and her servants. Hecate is the tyrannical ruler of Iphigene with an all-consuming hatred for the living. She unleashes hordes of dogs, snakes and bats. At one time, it seems, Iphigene was a stopover point for the souls of the dead. Now it has become a prison, a purgatory of waste and decaying streets, of pain and physical torture right out of Clive Barker. There are also the dying dead—horrifying ghouls that lurk in Iphigene’s dark alleys and feed on virtually anything that crosses their path. Iphigene is a place in desperate need of a savior.
Myths and folklore teach us that the hero must undergo trials. Frequently, they suffer intense physical pain. When the hero in question happens to have two X chromosomes, that suffering tends to be very literal. I appreciated that, throughout the book, Kadrey casually references the threat of sexual violence that women, especially teenage girls, face, without being exploitative—the creeps in the library, stepfathers, men on the street. When Emmett demands locks of hair and baby teeth from Zoe, she just assumes it’s for some kinky thrill. The old tales frequently deal, in some opaque fashion, with female sexuality. Sex, in turn, tends to go hand-in-hand with death—the rape of Persephone, Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood. In France, when a girl loses her virginity, it is still known as “seeing the wolf.” Like Inanna, Zoe suffers a painful descent into the underworld. In addition to being attacked, bitten and scratched by Hecate’s minions, Zoe sustains many injuries. She is pierced with a longbow arrow. Like Cinderella, she dresses in rags and carries a broom.
These references work in the larger context of the book. Kadrey chooses his allusions with great deliberation. Zoe’s very name is Greek for “life.” Like Isis, Zoe takes her broken brother and makes him whole. Isis was from the pantheon of Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The sun plays an important role in the liberation of Iphiegene, which is named for Iphigenia. Zoe herself is Iphigenia, the willing sacrifice for her father. Like St. Teresa, taking that bolt to the heart is a revelation. Queen Hecate is named for the Greek goddess of magic and necromancy. Hecate was once a girl named Iphigenia, transformed into a deity by Artemis, protector of young girls. Emmett is Ammit, the crocodile-headed devourer of souls.
Using all of these references, for me, seemed to infuse real magic with the magic of fiction. These are actual deities who once had large cults—some still do, in neo-pagan circles. It underscores the point that in the world of Dead Set, the line between life and death is very thin, as is the line between the real and the unreal. These otherworldly people, places and situations have a real, tangible effect on Zoe’s life, and the life of her mother. So often, when a young hero goes on their journey, they get back to find that no one has really missed them—people thought that they were just sleeping or playing hide-and-seek. Aside from their internal growth, there is no evidence of their experience. When Valentine and her father give Zoe gifts, she still has them when she gets back home. Likewise, when Zoe returns from her underworld journey, she is still filthy and bloody. She still has her wounds. I loved that—for all that she’s done, Zoe should have something to show for it.
The first half of Dead Set is so. Freakin’. Good. I found myself stepping away every few pages to do a little fangirl happy dance. Don’t get me wrong-- the second half isn’t bad. It’s just a bit muddled. There’s a lot of running around and people getting separated, then finding each other, then getting separated again. Sometimes, the action sequences were a bit hard to follow. In the end, good-byes are exchanged about 32 times, and yet, for all its messiness, I can’t help but feel that some of the resolution is a little too neat, too down-pat.
But it doesn’t matter. The first half is more than worth the price of admission, and the idea is so cool, so original, that I can’t wait to go back and read this again.
If Neil Gaiman and Chuck Palahniuk had a love child, it would look something like Dead Set. A young heroine has been dropped into a Gaiman scenario. The liberal sprinkling of myth and folklore, from Sumer to Greece to the Brothers Grimm, is also very Gaiman-esque. But the story has a Palahniuk-like edge, the heroine, Palahniuk pluck (I was reminded of Madison Spencer from Damned). There are plenty of other elements here, too—I saw shades of The Crow in this story, with its grungy alt rock patina. Kadrey hearkens back to his other works, with the seedy California setting, its unique subculture of hipsters and lowlifes. I saw Spirited Away. I saw The Wizard of Oz, to which Kadrey openly tips his hat. I saw St. Teresa of Avila.
But the heart of the story is all Kadrey. He masterfully blends these components into a thrillingly new, original tale. The story centers around Zoe, our 16-year-old protagonist. Zoe was born into a household where it’s all punk rock all the time. Punk is the country, the language and the religion. Zoe and her folks are vinyl, vintage rock T-shirts and Chuck Taylors. Once upon a time, Zoe’s father was deep into the L.A. punk scene-- he played in a band and later managed his own club. But when Zoe was born, he settled down and turned respectable-- got the job, got the house in the burbs. Zoe’s mom, a former artist and fierce rocker babe in her own right, decided to become a homemaker.
But the universe pitches their little nuclear family unit a nasty curveball when Zoe’s father drops dead of a heart attack. A series of sadly plausible legal snafus prevent Zoe and her mom from receiving any sort of benefits. Broke and foreclosed on, they have to move to a cruddy apartment in the Big City. Zoe’s mother can’t find a job. Zoe finds herself facing the problems that impoverished, urban kids face: no money to afford a proper cell phone. Creepy indigents tagging along as she walks down the street, perverts in the public library. Zoe’s new school is a few blocks away from a strip club. Fast food for dinner every night.
All this, on top of being the new kid, on top of grieving for her father—well, it’s no wonder that Zoe has gone through a bout of self-harm, (she’s a cutter). Throw in the fact that Zoe has always had vivid dreams about a tree house and a boy named Valentine, who she calls her “dream brother,” and it really doesn’t come as any big shock that she’s spent some time undergoing psychiatric treatment.
And by the way, Kadrey covers most of this in the first chapter. It’s hard not to admire that kind of economy.
So. The stage is set. You’ve got your heroine, a sensitive, imaginative, confused young girl. She’s lonely. She’s under extreme stress. All she thinks about is death. Could she be anymore ripe for the full-on I Never Promised You a Rose Garden-type break with reality?
I think not. And it’s expected, in a story like this, to introduce the unreliable narrator trope. We expect to go into this wondering if our girl is really experiencing this stuff, or if she’s just gone clean off her rocker. But let me just take this moment to say I loved Zoe. She’s tough, persistent and compassionate. I was impressed that Kadrey could delve so believably into the mind of a teenage girl. I love how normal she is—she likes school okay, most of the time. She and her mom aren’t getting along so great right now, but you know that deep down, they care about each other. While she spares boys a thought, she’s more focused on herself and her family situation. In many ways, Zoe is still just a kid—when she dreams of Valentine, they play in their tree house and throw almonds at each other. Overall, she’s a very good person—just what a heroine ought to be.
When her particular white rabbit/cyclone/sprinkler of fairy dust appears, it comes in the most delightfully new, unexpected form: a record shop. Of course Zoe would go into an old record store. Of course she would seek out comfort and familiarity in a place filled with turntables and old tunes. She even finds an old album cover that her mother designed back in the day.
She also discovers the proprietor. The name of the record store is Ammut’s (“Ammut Records: Rare, Used & Lost.” Did I mention that Zoe has also just watched a documentary on ancient Egypt?), but he tells her to call him Emmett. While perusing Emmett’s merchandise, Zoe stumbles onto a back room.
It’s a very special back room. The records don’t look like regular records, and a cone of strange incense perfumes the air. Ammut/Emmett tells her that not just anybody would find their way to it. These records, he explains, are not music, but records of lives, of people who have passed on. (Akashic records—geddit?) When you listen to the music on a special machine, called an Animagraph, you can experience everything that person experienced.
For example, Zoe straps on the Animagraph and blasts back in time to 1902 Virginia, where she gets to experience the life of a woman named Caroline. It’s a pretty crazy trip.
You can already see where this is going. Zoe will want to see her father’s record.
And, from there, it just gets weirder. It also gets more excellent. I don’t want to give too much away—I want the reader to experience this book just as I did, with no knowledge or expectations, so the magic just washes over you. I will say that, of course, Emmett is not what he appears to be. Nor does he share his wonders with Zoe for free. He demands payment.
From Emmett’s store, Zoe embarks on a long, dangerous journey that takes her to the underworld, a land called Iphigene. There, she reunites with her father. She meets Valentine, who is, of course, more than just a dream figure. She also confronts terrifying evils, mainly in the form of Queen Hecate and her servants. Hecate is the tyrannical ruler of Iphigene with an all-consuming hatred for the living. She unleashes hordes of dogs, snakes and bats. At one time, it seems, Iphigene was a stopover point for the souls of the dead. Now it has become a prison, a purgatory of waste and decaying streets, of pain and physical torture right out of Clive Barker. There are also the dying dead—horrifying ghouls that lurk in Iphigene’s dark alleys and feed on virtually anything that crosses their path. Iphigene is a place in desperate need of a savior.
Myths and folklore teach us that the hero must undergo trials. Frequently, they suffer intense physical pain. When the hero in question happens to have two X chromosomes, that suffering tends to be very literal. I appreciated that, throughout the book, Kadrey casually references the threat of sexual violence that women, especially teenage girls, face, without being exploitative—the creeps in the library, stepfathers, men on the street. When Emmett demands locks of hair and baby teeth from Zoe, she just assumes it’s for some kinky thrill. The old tales frequently deal, in some opaque fashion, with female sexuality. Sex, in turn, tends to go hand-in-hand with death—the rape of Persephone, Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood. In France, when a girl loses her virginity, it is still known as “seeing the wolf.” Like Inanna, Zoe suffers a painful descent into the underworld. In addition to being attacked, bitten and scratched by Hecate’s minions, Zoe sustains many injuries. She is pierced with a longbow arrow. Like Cinderella, she dresses in rags and carries a broom.
These references work in the larger context of the book. Kadrey chooses his allusions with great deliberation. Zoe’s very name is Greek for “life.” Like Isis, Zoe takes her broken brother and makes him whole. Isis was from the pantheon of Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The sun plays an important role in the liberation of Iphiegene, which is named for Iphigenia. Zoe herself is Iphigenia, the willing sacrifice for her father. Like St. Teresa, taking that bolt to the heart is a revelation. Queen Hecate is named for the Greek goddess of magic and necromancy. Hecate was once a girl named Iphigenia, transformed into a deity by Artemis, protector of young girls. Emmett is Ammit, the crocodile-headed devourer of souls.
Using all of these references, for me, seemed to infuse real magic with the magic of fiction. These are actual deities who once had large cults—some still do, in neo-pagan circles. It underscores the point that in the world of Dead Set, the line between life and death is very thin, as is the line between the real and the unreal. These otherworldly people, places and situations have a real, tangible effect on Zoe’s life, and the life of her mother. So often, when a young hero goes on their journey, they get back to find that no one has really missed them—people thought that they were just sleeping or playing hide-and-seek. Aside from their internal growth, there is no evidence of their experience. When Valentine and her father give Zoe gifts, she still has them when she gets back home. Likewise, when Zoe returns from her underworld journey, she is still filthy and bloody. She still has her wounds. I loved that—for all that she’s done, Zoe should have something to show for it.
The first half of Dead Set is so. Freakin’. Good. I found myself stepping away every few pages to do a little fangirl happy dance. Don’t get me wrong-- the second half isn’t bad. It’s just a bit muddled. There’s a lot of running around and people getting separated, then finding each other, then getting separated again. Sometimes, the action sequences were a bit hard to follow. In the end, good-byes are exchanged about 32 times, and yet, for all its messiness, I can’t help but feel that some of the resolution is a little too neat, too down-pat.
But it doesn’t matter. The first half is more than worth the price of admission, and the idea is so cool, so original, that I can’t wait to go back and read this again.