Southern Gods
Sep. 27th, 2014 10:20 amLooking at the cover of Southern Gods tells you what I enjoyed about it.
I don't normally read horror, but I'm glad I read this, at least the first half.
The first half is dripping with flavour. It reminds me of To Kill a Mocking Bird post-WWII with blues and voodoo. A loan shark is sent on not-his-usual-job, to find someone who's disappeared in post-WWII American South. A pirate radio station plays unearthly blues music, which is haunting, but also dangerous.
It feels real in the way many books don't. The record producer isn't just fulfilling a roll, he's scrambling to get a dominant position in the emerging blues market, by bribing all the tiny radio stations to play his music. His assistants, one of whom have disappeared, are normal family men, doing their job of driving round the south schmoozing each little DJ or radio-station owner.
The record producer panics when he hears the rise-up-from-the-grave-and-murder music, and cuts it off, but manages to record some using his recording booth, and is willing to risk finding it to see if he can harness the magic in the music for less-ominous ends.
When a shadowy creature appears, it's really terrifying.
Unfortunately, when the second half gets more specific, it breaks the magic for me. The mythos is tied explicitly into the lovecraftian mythos, which rather broke my suspension of disbelief. It even uses the word "godshatter", which really, really broke my suspension of disbelief -- it's a good concept, but to me it just doesn't how the several-hundred-years-ago church would have described it. And there's an abrupt transition from scary to "beat them up".
And there were a few other problems, like the relationship between white estranged-daughter and black housekeeper, who were closest friends as children, is nice, but develops the daughter at the expense of the housekeeper.
I don't normally read horror, but I'm glad I read this, at least the first half.
The first half is dripping with flavour. It reminds me of To Kill a Mocking Bird post-WWII with blues and voodoo. A loan shark is sent on not-his-usual-job, to find someone who's disappeared in post-WWII American South. A pirate radio station plays unearthly blues music, which is haunting, but also dangerous.
It feels real in the way many books don't. The record producer isn't just fulfilling a roll, he's scrambling to get a dominant position in the emerging blues market, by bribing all the tiny radio stations to play his music. His assistants, one of whom have disappeared, are normal family men, doing their job of driving round the south schmoozing each little DJ or radio-station owner.
The record producer panics when he hears the rise-up-from-the-grave-and-murder music, and cuts it off, but manages to record some using his recording booth, and is willing to risk finding it to see if he can harness the magic in the music for less-ominous ends.
When a shadowy creature appears, it's really terrifying.
Unfortunately, when the second half gets more specific, it breaks the magic for me. The mythos is tied explicitly into the lovecraftian mythos, which rather broke my suspension of disbelief. It even uses the word "godshatter", which really, really broke my suspension of disbelief -- it's a good concept, but to me it just doesn't how the several-hundred-years-ago church would have described it. And there's an abrupt transition from scary to "beat them up".
And there were a few other problems, like the relationship between white estranged-daughter and black housekeeper, who were closest friends as children, is nice, but develops the daughter at the expense of the housekeeper.