witchcraft | Lorelei By Starlight

I am a Dresden Files addict. I am, frankly, more than a little in love with Harry Dresden. Recently I re-read Storm Front, the first book in Jim Butcher‘s series. I love this series so much that I have actually read all of the books, but this was for a new book club that I’m in, and I was very happy to refresh myself on how Harry’s exploits began, because I truly feel that this series is urban fantasy at its best.

Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire in Chicago. Far from being superhuman due to magical prowess, he is a wonderful “everyman” character, who suffers from many of the same flaws as typical mortals. Often, things don’t work out quite right for him, he gets beat up a lot, and many times finds himself in at best uncomfortable and at worst life threatening situations. In this first book, he goes up against a rogue necromancer who is killing people and who eventually gets around to threatening Harry’s life. To complicate matters, Harry routinely works with the police force, especially the cop Murphy, who has little time for the complexities of how the wizard world interacts with the human world. And to complicate matters further, on this particular case Marcone, the local crime king, has specifically asked Harry not to investigate. Somehow, throughout it all, Harry manages to save the day, navigating as best he can between all of the different priorities and life threatening situations, making hard decisions, fighting off giant scorpions and toad-like demons, while always keeping what is right at the forefront of his mind.

One of the reasons that I fell in love with this character was because of his constant struggle to do the right thing. He is often accused of using his powers for nefarious means (especially by the Warden Morgan from the White Council of wizards), but in reality he always makes decisions based on the needs of others, even if the cost for himself may end up being high. Butcher does an excellent job of keeping the pressure on just enough to keep the story going, while allowing the reader to get to know Harry and understand him. He doesn’t use his magic for personal gain, and for all of his strengths there are weaknesses that balance him out. For example, his powers interfere with things that run on electricity, so no fancy car or computer for Harry. Instead, he drives a beat up old VW and does a lot of his detective work the old fashioned way, with just a little help from some locator spells. He is also not the best at relationships. Often this is a problem that is caused by him having to weigh out what information he can share, such as with Murphy or his potential girlfriend, Susan. We see everything through Harry’s eyes, though, so we can understand his struggle and cheer him on, because we can see that he’s essentially a good guy. One of the best.

The setting for these books is good, too. Using the fairly familiar backdrop of Chicago gives us a way to envision Harry’s world. However, there is also an alternate realm, the Nevernever, that houses all manner of fae creatures. Harry is able to open a doorway into this world, if needed, but as with all interactions of the fae kind, it is dangerous and tricky. Throughout the series, Butcher develops this part of the storyline more deeply, and there is a really nice balance between the “real” and the fantastic. Possibly the best that I have seen done in urban fantasy.

Character development throughout the series is good, too. History is created between different individuals – mortal and fae – and often this comes back in both helpful and detrimental fashion. The relationship between Harry and Murphy is an interesting exploration of partnership. And, there are some fun characters in the books, too, such as Bob, the incorporeal being who sometimes advises and assists Harry, lives in a skull, continually wisecracks, and loves to indulge in steamy romantic novels.

If you haven’t checked out this series yet, I highly recommend it, but must caution you – you may become addicted! Now is a great time to start, since there are 15 books in the series so far with the most recent, Skin Games, having just been released.

Occultation and Other Stories book cover

Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron

If you like the kind of horror that is atmospherically influenced — say by dark, cold woodland nights, or eerily deserted farmhouses, or maybe ancient, overlooked ruins and caves placed far out in the wilderness — if you like all of these things then you will love Laird Barron. If you enjoy horror stories where people become utterly stranded in areas that don’t seem that far off the beaten track at first, but end up being a whole world away from reality, or where a dark night hunting in the woods opens onto scenes of creatures and actions that would break a man’s mind forever, if he lived to tell about it — if you also enjoy all of these things, then you will want to get your hands on something by Laird Barron.

I found out about Barron thanks to Stephen Graham Jones, and I don’t remember now whether it was in an intro to one of Graham Jones’ books or one of his articles or blog posts, but I definitely do remember that it is to him I owe the gratitude. The first thing I picked up was, Occultation and Other Stories. The first story, “The Forest”, starts:

After the drive had grown long and monotonous, Partridge shut his eyes and the woman was waiting. She wore a cold white mask similar to the mask Bengali woodcutters donned when they ventured into the mangrove forests along the coast…The woman in the white mask reached into a wooden box. She lifted a tarantula from the box and held it to her breast like a black carnation. The contrast was as magnificent as a stark Monet if Monet had painted watercolors of emaciated patricians and their pet spiders.

Barron’s prose is elegant, a long, dark dream, but interspersed with real and minimalist modern clips that create an overall impression that is unmatched. He also has a knack for conversation, usually between couples, that somehow manages to combine daily reality with the slightly off center world in which his characters live:

–Holy shit, what’s that? he said.
–Coyotes, she said. Scavenging for damned souls.
–Sounds fucking grandiose for coyotes.
–And what do you know? They’re the favored children of the carrion gods. Grandiosity is their gig.

One of my favorite stories by Barron, “Blackwood’s Baby”, appears in a collection, Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense. This is the ultimate hunting trip gone wrong. It comes complete with a creepy, old-money style hunting lodge back in the rural hills of Washington state and an assorted selection of the world’s best hunters, all gathered for the annual attempt to take down a stag rumored to be the spawn of the devil. Barron uses a familiar setup in this story, but his prose and imagery spin this into a completely different tale than what is expected, and it’s a story that I simply can’t get out of my head. I’m happy to see that this story will also be included in his upcoming book (see below).

The Croning by Laird Barron

Most recently I read his full-length work, The Croning. In this work, Barron explores a combination of fantasy, mythology, and concepts within a relationship. Question come up, like, how well do you really know your significant other? What’s the real reason their family doesn’t come to visit? And, what in hell actually happened on that trip to Mexico?

The book starts with a modified recounting of “Rumpelstiltskin”, which sets the stage for the underlying evil. We are then introduced to the main characters of the book, Don and Michelle, who are both academics with a long history of secrets, strangeness, and the compromises that come with any long-term relationship. However, when they move to Michelle’s family house out in the countryside, things begin to come to head in a big way. The house and surrounding area are revealed to contain mysteries that Don hasn’t let himself think about for many years. There are some really well done creepy passages in this book. Take for example Don’s memory of one night when he heard a strange noise:

He’d sat up to investigate, when Michelle gripped his wrist. Her hand was cold, wasn’t it? Like it had been in a meat locker. How unreal the white oval of her face hanging there in the gloom. Her hair floated black and wild and her fingers tightened until his bones gritted. A purple ring puffed his wrist the next day.

Honey, don’t, she’d said in a soft, matter-of-fact tone, and pulled him against her breast. Don’t leave me. The bed is cold.

No, she was cold; her hands, her body, frigid as a corpse through her thin gown. Yet he’d streamed with sweat, his chest sticky, his pajamas drenched and he’d been breathing like a man who’d run up a steep hill.

As a reader, we spend the book, along with Don, trying to figure out what exactly his wife has been up to all these years on her research trips. The answers are not pretty.

I think I’m a little addicted to Baird’s unusual style and ideas, and am eagerly awaiting the next installment of his writing, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, which is set to release on August 13, 2013. Read an early review here at the Agony Column.