My Latest Favourite Author

I’ve found a new favourite author and he’s named Mike Carey.
Mike Carey’s production contains an unusual mix of books (Lucifer and Hellblazer, which was filmed as Constantine), scripts for comics (X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four) and a movie screen play (being filmed). I’ve seen the movie, mainly as I wanted to see Peter Stormare in the role of Satan, but other than that this is nothing I can comment on.
For more on Mike Carey please visit his home page at www.mike-carey.co.uk.
I would describe the Felix Castor series as a noir detective novel with a supernatural twist. It takes place in London in a not too distant future or parallel now, where the dead have been awakened and returns as ghost, zombies and loup-garous (animals taken over by human sprits that bends them into humanoid shape). Oh and occasionally demons walk the streets as well.
Felix is an exorcist, or used to be, but stopped after he had a bad incident that ended with his best friend has to share his body with a demon. He also has a bad habit of taking on difficult cases, when he knows he really shouldn’t.
Carey paints the imagery bleak to create a great noir backdrop, by mixing sceneries that crumbles in the details with dark stories that build up the characters beautifully. The novels each span about 500 pages and would be unbearable bricks if it wasn’t for his humorous and twisting descriptive language that lifts the reader without breaking the general mood of the story. Here’s a few good examples; Felix restlessness is described as "I prowled about the house all day like a hermit with haemorrhoids.."? or his admiration of beauty during forced silence with "...every man in the room drew in his breath with an audible, almost painful catch. Every man except me, that is: I couldn't make a sound if my life depended on it. Sorry, that should have read 'even though'. " How can you not love language like that?
The books are well written and the story catching, but it’s the humorous language that makes him my latest favourites.

So far I’ve read the first three books in his Felix Castor series; The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle and Dead Men’s Boots. Books four and five; Thicker Than Water and The Naming of the Beast are eagerly waiting in my book stack on the night side table.

Till Next Time,
Martin Frid

Book Binge 101

OK, I confess I’m an occasional book binger and the last week (or so) was a classic example of how to indulge the literary addiction.
It started on April 30th when I passed by the SF book store in Malmö and with some time to kill I started to browse the shelves and found three books from my ’to get’-list. I’ve quite a few authors and book series that I try to follow – unfortunately I haven’t found any good tool to track these – yet.
I left the shop with three books; Dead Men’s Boots by Mike Carey, The Reckoning by Kelly Armstrong and Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrisson.
By Monday I’d finished The Reckoning and about two third of Dead Man’s Boots and as I Thursday was a Holiday, leading into a long weekend with a grim weather forecast, I went back to the shop after I finished work on Wednesday to look for a few new series and left the shop with SIX new books; the continuation of Mike Carey’s Felix Castor series, Thicker Than Water and The Naming of the Beast, the start of Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series, Magic Bites and Magic Burns as well as the start of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse.
By the end of holiday weekend I’d finished Dead Men’s Boots and both of Ilona Andrews books.
To Sum up five books read and nine bought within the span of ten days, a true book binge.
Oh yeah, I managed to see a couple of movies as well.

Till Next Time,
Martin Frid