This in my June Review for Enduring Romance.
It's Summer. Time for
a get-a-way to someplace warm and exotic.
OK, so we all can't
take off and go to Tahiti, or even Florida, or Virginia Beach, but we can
travel through books. Liz Williams' wonderful Detective Inspector Chen Novels
make for a great reading vacation.
The series is set in
Singapore Three a sprawling city in an alternative near future. Creatures from
Chinese folklore walk the streets rubbing elbows with traditional grandmothers,
and urban techno-punks. Heaven, Earth, and Hell are linked by next generation
cell phones, and with the right paperwork business tycoons travel between the
levels of reality. Det. Insp. Wei Chen is a detective who can summon ghosts. While investigating why the ghost of a wealthy industrialist's daughter has not
shown up for her appointment in Heaven, Chen is paired with Seneschal Zhu Irzh,
a vice cop from Hell, literally. He's a demon, but honest and honorable in his
own way, and somewhat cursed with a conscience. Chen is middle aged and hard
working, he has spent his professional life dedicated to a goddess, he does not
rock the boat or break rules, except for marrying a beautiful young demon who
he helped escape an arranged marriage in Hell. Needless to say that complicates
things when her former fiancee and her family seem to bee connected with the
missing ghost.
All this takes place
in Snake Agent. In the other two books the plot thickens, a goddess goes mad,
two nice young ghosts have a son, who might not be all he seems, Chen, and Zhu Irzh,
and Celestial Warrior, who looks like a fragile, young girl, get sent on a
fact-finding mission to Hell complications insure and various adventures take
place. Oh and there are Dragons. Williams books are Urban Fantasies, but
without the clichés that often make the sub genre feel stale these days. She
does a wonderful job of realizing Singapore Three, and it's mirror city in
Hell. Williams makes her readers feel like they have been to the city, from the
small stifling hot go-downs and street markets to the glittering homes and
offices of the super-rich business and industrial elite to Chen's house boat
docked on the edge of the City's crowded harbor. Hell is run by powerful
ministries, War, Epidemics, Lust etc. Upper Class demons, and souls who's
family did not follow the proper ceremonies, or pay the right fees to get then
into heaven live lives much like folks on earth , the lower levels are full of
mindless horrors and hungry ghosts. Heaven is perfect, peach scented and maybe
just a touch boring, for those not ready to become Celestial beings.
Chen, Zhu Irzh are
great characters. The supporting cast is also wonderful. There is Chen's sweet
demon wife Inari, her pet tea pot badger. Robin Yuan, is a wage slave at Paugeng,
a powerful multi-national pharmaceutical company and Mhara , a timid young
demon being used as a lab rat in Paugeng's research diversion. Jhai Tserai, is
the Paugeng heiress, a brilliant business woman, murder suspect, not all the
she seems and possibly Zhu Irzh's soul mate. Mrs. Pa is an elderly widow
raising the grandson because her daughter's ghost didn't want him growing up in
Hell. Mai a young woman sent to Hell by mistake when she died of cholera at age
three.
So, if you can't get
away the usual way to some place exotic this summer try diving
into a books and taking a visit to Singapore Three.
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