ISBN: 9780345515582

Downside book #2

I was given this book to review.

Chess Putnam lives in a hybrid punk-pseudo-Catholic world where ghosts are real, The Church rules everything and Chess can only be herself in the drug-laced gutter rock bars of Triumph City. So it’s not actually Catholicism that has taken over (in fact all the religions we know today are archaic and illegal), but rather a domineering, completely ruling “Church” that came about when ghosts tore through the streets, killing everyone they could many years ago. Since then the Church (the one that rules the world) has taken over by protecting people from the murderous ghosts who still try to break free every so often.

The dark angle of universally murderous ghosts is a greater metaphor, especially in this second book in Kane’s Downside series, since the books focus on Chess, who is a Debunker (and ghost banisher) for the Church, but who is also haunted by her vicious childhood and has become an addict just to deal the trauma of her past. Terrible, the right hand man to Chess’ dealer, but an almost good-hearted guy, asks Chess for help when a series of hookers are found dead, and the witnesses say a ghost is to blame. Rival dealer Slobag, has been facing the same problem. With both sides ready to throw down as much as cooperate, Chess being bribed or blackmailed into loyalty to each side, the Church giving her a high profile, career making case and a ghost and witch team doing the unspeakable to the women of the street, all the pressure is on Chess, who just can’t handle it.

Chess is a spiderweb of cracks, pieces of her slowly giving way to the pressure. Reading Unholy Magic is watching her breakdown, under the strain others put on her, and the tragedy of the ways she chooses to punish herself. Unholy Magic is not a pretty book. It’s not an easy experience, but it is a viscerally emotional story. It’s dark, at times outright lovely, a must read for those who read urban fantasy for a dark, psychologically twisted tinge to characters and world settings. Some of the best writing in speculative fiction today can be found here, with monumental world building, raw characters and a darkly surreal feel that’s hard to find elsewhere. One for horror and dark fantasy fans, not lightweights, Unholy Magic is simply not to be missed.

ISBN: 978-0345515575
I was given this book as a gift.

Downside book #1

With this book Kane has brought Urban fantasy back to its roots, not a place where a girl detective has to choose between the unbelievably sexy vampire that might someday weaken and kill her, or the blindingly gorgeous werewolf who might get her mixed up in a fight too big for her and end up just as dead. Here Kane takes strong element of the world we all know and forges them into something new, familiar, yet utterly different.

In the Downside books the Church and the government are one and the same, but this isn’t the modern Church running things. Instead the supernatural is fact, and veined with magic, ghosts and witches, and the Church as controller of it, also must protect the citizens from the supernatural (mostly so it can maintain it’s steel-locked control of the world). Chess is a witch working for Church, a Debunker, who either debunks faked hauntings, or clears up real ones for her employers. She’s also a drug addict who owes someone terrible a lot of money. So in one book readers will find a fantasy-skewed religious conspiracy thriller and a paranormal, hard core (in the dark and harsh sense and in the Oi punk! sense) noir mystery story.

Bump, Chess’ dealer, demands that she debunk the haunting of an old, abandoned air field so he can use it to funnel in more drugs. Meanwhile a rival dealer makes her an offer, enticing her with free drugs, if only she’ll make sure Bump can’t use the airfield. Both tasks turn out to be more complicated than expected since Terrible, Bump’s right hand enforcer, becomes Chess’ assistant and guard as she works, and as Chess tries to fight her attractions to Lex, a dealer for the rival drug lord. In the end the airfield isn’t just haunted, something much, much worse is going on, and Chess can’t even go to the Church for back up because of her own dark dealings and her suspicion that someone in the church is behind the dark magic at the airfield.

Unholy Ghosts is a thrilling ride, textured and vivid, a powerhouse of fantasy. Brimming with characters that aren’t quite heroes but aren’t quite bad guys either, it shows the hard core, broke down parts of the world other stories skip over, the dark side of reality that comes not from magic, but from the poor, desperate and disillusioned trying to make it through a hard life.