I confess, I needed time to acclimate to Bryan Camp’s debut novel. I got distracted by Camp’s fannish nods, some direct and others oblique, to other writers, from Charlaine Harris and Jim Butcher to William Gibson and even Graham Greene. But as I moved into Camp’s rhythm, I began realizing he wasn’t so much name-dropping as acknowledging the fan-base already drawn to books like these. He’s crafted a damned decent debut.
Dragged into his old haunts, Jude finds himself playing games with forces older than humankind. Literal games: some kind of tarot/poker hybrid primarily. Except the entire novel unfolds inside one hotly contested hand, as players literally bet their souls. It’s a killer hand, too, as the Fortune god gets his throat slit. Jude competes with a vampire, an angel, and an Egyptian god to assume the divine mantle; vast multitudes ride on one turn of the cards.
Jude resembles similar genre characters, like Harry Dresden and Sookie Stackhouse, in multiple ways. He has vast powers which could shake Earth’s foundations, but which he cannot fully control… yet. He inherited this power from a parent (or ancestor) whose secrets could tragically intrude upon his current life. And though not a detective himself, he must investigate a crime too profound for the police, before apocalyptic ramifications start rolling down.
So, Jude must discover who murdered the Crescent City’s most beloved god, having wagered his own soul. But even as he stalks the mysterious killer, the killer stalks him; without meaning to, Jude leaves a trail of bodies behind himself. He quickly realizes that his beloved city, his burg of jazz funerals and voodoo enchantment, hangs in the balance. And his trusted magical gifts… have gone missing.
 |
| Bryan Camp |
Behind Camp’s urban-fantasy flourishes, Hurricane Katrina lingers, like Old Hamlet’s ghost. Everyone except Jude has fallen into their “new normal” routines, but Jude, whose magical abilities tie innately to New Orleans itself, can’t ignore the flood damage. His self-flagellation after the levees broke has stained everything in his life. This resembles other post-Katrina novels, like Tom Piazza’s City of Refuge or Erica Spindler’s Watch Me Die, filtered through Camp’s lens.
You’ve perhaps noticed how many prior novelists I’ve already name-checked. As I said above, this probably isn’t accidental. Throughout his first half, Camp is half author, half fanboy, like a reader at your favorite sci-fi convention. Then, around page 200, the novel takes a sudden, unexpected veer into new territory. Well, not really new, it’s actually quite Jungian, but new to Jude. Camp really kicks readers in the pants.
This sudden zigzag, coupled with Camp’s careful attention to detail, gives this novel a literary quality often missing from genre fiction. Camp charts a personal course between conventional beach reading and high-minded belles-lettres. This probably reflects his background: both an MFA scholar and a Clarion West graduate, his learning as a writer is unusually flexible. More writers, literary and genre, should aspire to such complexity.
One could pair this novel with Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces and unpack deeper truths about now natural disasters create modern mythic journeys. I might do so later. Jude Dubuisson is a complex character with deeper qualities: not wholly mortal, he’s nevertheless as mortal as his city. But it’s also a rollicking genre adventure, if you prefer such fun escapades.
So that’s the experience. Camp starts off nerding out on genre stereotypes, and stuffy purists might want to quit. But as he progresses, and we settle into his groove, there’s so much more going on. Veteran genre readers might wish his early chapters didn’t rely on tropes arranged like Legos. But if we muster grit enough to persevere, Camp provides a deeper journey. If we stick with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment