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Book Review: 'Bone Key', by Keith R.A. DeCandido--SPOILERS
I meant to talk about this several days ago, but alas, I was distracted by the lure of holding forth on various television shows. I finally got my hands on Keith R.A. DeCandido's latest Supernatural tie-in, Bone Key. I say finally because neither Borders nor Waldenbooks carried it, and I had to hit the Barnes and Noble at the run-down mall in town to find it. Bastards. Between this game of book scavenger hunt and Best Buy not stocking Metallica's latest release the day it came out, I can't help but wonder if the retail world is being run by meth-addled monkeys with boner-induced hypoxia.
Oh, dear. I'm straying far afield from my intended topic. That happens when I'm recovering from a morning on city public transit. It's frightening, being strapped down like cheap cargo while a nicotine-jonesing bus driver hurtles through waddling city traffic full of stoned college students and self-important bureaucrats, and being frightened makes me logy and tired. I suspect it's all that white-knuckled clutching.
So. I read Bone Key. Other folks have said that Bone is superior to his previous SPN novel, Nevermore, but such a statement implies that Nevermore was lacking, and I disagree with that notion wholeheartedly. Nevermore was immensely satisfying, a lovely, fast-paced spook yarn that can be read in one afternoon or doled out chapter by chapter as a bit of nighttime brain candy. For that matter, so is Bone Key.
As a native Floridian, it was interesting to see my state through the lens of an outsider. Since I was born and raised here, I see nothing at all extraordinary about tract malls infested with tourist boutiques hawking Florida t-shirts and postcards, or with expertly shabby tin-roofed seafood shacks that fleece google-eyed Idahoans under the threadbare guises of Florida ambiance and "top-notch" seafood. Bohemian scheisterism is this state's lifebood. After a while, the schlock and kitsch of the tourist trade becomes so much audiovisual white noise to the natives, who really just want the goddamn blue hair in the Caddy with Vermont plates to MOVE OUT OF THE WAY.
Granted, the ambiance found in the Keys differs from that of the peninsula. As DeCandido so deftly illustrates through his nimble use of character and well-crafted backstory, the Keys are a culture unto themselves. The character of Yaphet--who, by the by, reminded me of Tommy Chong filtered through George Carlin's Hippie Dippy Weatherman--is so much a part of the Keys that he might as well have been spawned from them like a sentient, organic outgrowth. Put him in Sarasota or the tony enclave of Boca Raton, however, and he would be swiftly deemed undesirable and expurgated from the community.
To put it another way: The Keys are the Bahamas for young, white binge drinkers and professional daydreamers. The peninsula is where those people go when the dreams have died and they are soon to follow.
DeCandido imbues the Keys with a mystical exoticism and reminds stodgy sticks-in-the-mud like me that not everyone gets to live in paradise. The bar scene on Cayo Hueso smacks of hedonism and painless pleasure, and he constantly underscores the supernatural tension on the island with music and the ever-present and indestructible presence of the tourist trade. Yes, a vengeance spirit of the Calusa is sucking the life force from hapless white folks and discarding them like desiccated orange slices, and yes, a pair of demons are slicing tipsy tourists for their own ends, but beyond the insular bubble of the story, life goes on. The bars still beckon and the haunted isle hucksters keep peddling their wares. By anchoring the hyperreality of the Brothers Winchester to the mundane reality of the rest of the world, DeCandido creates a surreal, bizarre, and often sublime carnival atmosphere.
The climax of the story was excellent, with pitch-perfect pacing and nail-biting tension. Although any reader not huffing rock salt knows that Sam and Dean are going to survive because they're the Big Damn Heroes, just how well they'll survive isn't assured until the final pages. That they'll go on is a given; that they'll do so unscathed is not, and to be able to sustain reader interest and emotional investment when we all know how it has to turn out is no mean feat.
The book is not without flaws, however. The beginning feels labored, as though DeCandido is still wrestling with just what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. The writing in the opening pages is stilted and terse. Maybe he was indulging his inner Hemingway, but I suspect part of his writerly reticence might stem from his desire not to directly contravene established show canon. The less he says about Sam and Dean, the better. At least until he finds his feet, which he eventually does. You can see the moment he decides on his course; the writing smooths out, the sentences grow more complex and fluid, and the story screams, "This. This is what I have to say. Listen." It's marvelous to see a writer hit his stride, and DeCandido hits his in Chapter 2 and never looks back.
A continuity conundrum of note: Early in the book, Dean notes that Sam has never been to Cayo Hueso. Later, when he meets Snoopy, who is said to be two, he says he hasn't seen him since he was a puppy. Now, assuming that Snoopy was three months old when Dean saw him and knowing as per DeCandido's note that the story takes place after the S3 episode "A Very Supernatural Christmas", wouldn't that mean Sam should have been with Dean, not John? Two years would've put the first Cayo Hueso trip at December 2005, and Sam was with Dean by October/November of that year and John was MIA. So, what happened?
Later still, Dean says that Sam has been to Cayo Hueso before, but says it was an in-and-out job, and that they didn't get to see the island but slept in the car. Now, maybe he meant that he and John had slept in the car, but if that's true, how did he a)meet Snoopy and b)know about the vagaries of the boardinghouse rooms(the mosquitoes, the A/C...)?
This is what happens when you're a lonely, bitter shut-in with nothing better to do than read, think, and blogpaint.
Anyway, it was an enjoyable read, and now that I've finished it, I can move on to another Decandido novel, A Burning House.
B+
Oh, dear. I'm straying far afield from my intended topic. That happens when I'm recovering from a morning on city public transit. It's frightening, being strapped down like cheap cargo while a nicotine-jonesing bus driver hurtles through waddling city traffic full of stoned college students and self-important bureaucrats, and being frightened makes me logy and tired. I suspect it's all that white-knuckled clutching.
So. I read Bone Key. Other folks have said that Bone is superior to his previous SPN novel, Nevermore, but such a statement implies that Nevermore was lacking, and I disagree with that notion wholeheartedly. Nevermore was immensely satisfying, a lovely, fast-paced spook yarn that can be read in one afternoon or doled out chapter by chapter as a bit of nighttime brain candy. For that matter, so is Bone Key.
As a native Floridian, it was interesting to see my state through the lens of an outsider. Since I was born and raised here, I see nothing at all extraordinary about tract malls infested with tourist boutiques hawking Florida t-shirts and postcards, or with expertly shabby tin-roofed seafood shacks that fleece google-eyed Idahoans under the threadbare guises of Florida ambiance and "top-notch" seafood. Bohemian scheisterism is this state's lifebood. After a while, the schlock and kitsch of the tourist trade becomes so much audiovisual white noise to the natives, who really just want the goddamn blue hair in the Caddy with Vermont plates to MOVE OUT OF THE WAY.
Granted, the ambiance found in the Keys differs from that of the peninsula. As DeCandido so deftly illustrates through his nimble use of character and well-crafted backstory, the Keys are a culture unto themselves. The character of Yaphet--who, by the by, reminded me of Tommy Chong filtered through George Carlin's Hippie Dippy Weatherman--is so much a part of the Keys that he might as well have been spawned from them like a sentient, organic outgrowth. Put him in Sarasota or the tony enclave of Boca Raton, however, and he would be swiftly deemed undesirable and expurgated from the community.
To put it another way: The Keys are the Bahamas for young, white binge drinkers and professional daydreamers. The peninsula is where those people go when the dreams have died and they are soon to follow.
DeCandido imbues the Keys with a mystical exoticism and reminds stodgy sticks-in-the-mud like me that not everyone gets to live in paradise. The bar scene on Cayo Hueso smacks of hedonism and painless pleasure, and he constantly underscores the supernatural tension on the island with music and the ever-present and indestructible presence of the tourist trade. Yes, a vengeance spirit of the Calusa is sucking the life force from hapless white folks and discarding them like desiccated orange slices, and yes, a pair of demons are slicing tipsy tourists for their own ends, but beyond the insular bubble of the story, life goes on. The bars still beckon and the haunted isle hucksters keep peddling their wares. By anchoring the hyperreality of the Brothers Winchester to the mundane reality of the rest of the world, DeCandido creates a surreal, bizarre, and often sublime carnival atmosphere.
The climax of the story was excellent, with pitch-perfect pacing and nail-biting tension. Although any reader not huffing rock salt knows that Sam and Dean are going to survive because they're the Big Damn Heroes, just how well they'll survive isn't assured until the final pages. That they'll go on is a given; that they'll do so unscathed is not, and to be able to sustain reader interest and emotional investment when we all know how it has to turn out is no mean feat.
The book is not without flaws, however. The beginning feels labored, as though DeCandido is still wrestling with just what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. The writing in the opening pages is stilted and terse. Maybe he was indulging his inner Hemingway, but I suspect part of his writerly reticence might stem from his desire not to directly contravene established show canon. The less he says about Sam and Dean, the better. At least until he finds his feet, which he eventually does. You can see the moment he decides on his course; the writing smooths out, the sentences grow more complex and fluid, and the story screams, "This. This is what I have to say. Listen." It's marvelous to see a writer hit his stride, and DeCandido hits his in Chapter 2 and never looks back.
A continuity conundrum of note: Early in the book, Dean notes that Sam has never been to Cayo Hueso. Later, when he meets Snoopy, who is said to be two, he says he hasn't seen him since he was a puppy. Now, assuming that Snoopy was three months old when Dean saw him and knowing as per DeCandido's note that the story takes place after the S3 episode "A Very Supernatural Christmas", wouldn't that mean Sam should have been with Dean, not John? Two years would've put the first Cayo Hueso trip at December 2005, and Sam was with Dean by October/November of that year and John was MIA. So, what happened?
Later still, Dean says that Sam has been to Cayo Hueso before, but says it was an in-and-out job, and that they didn't get to see the island but slept in the car. Now, maybe he meant that he and John had slept in the car, but if that's true, how did he a)meet Snoopy and b)know about the vagaries of the boardinghouse rooms(the mosquitoes, the A/C...)?
This is what happens when you're a lonely, bitter shut-in with nothing better to do than read, think, and blogpaint.
Anyway, it was an enjoyable read, and now that I've finished it, I can move on to another Decandido novel, A Burning House.
B+