Too-Human Demons
Oct. 28th, 2013 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselApr/May 2013
Snake Agent / The Demon and the City - Liz Williams - Nightshade Books, 2008
* * * / * * *
I am not generally keen on books that feature gods, angels or demons as secondary characters. A supernatural entity as the chief villain who must be defeated by mortals is fine - that's pretty much the plot of Lord of the Rings. So are stories where the main characters are gods or have god-like powers, such as the Greek myths or most superhero stories. But stories with human protagonists but deistic or demonic cameos don't really work for me. The problem is the balancing of character actions - logically, the supernatural beings should be running the show and that's usually where such stories end up, with the human protagonists' agency taken away by a Deus ex Machina. You can give the deistic characters mysterious reasons for limiting their interference in human lives, or have the protagonists acquire powers or artifacts that put them on the same level, but neither of these is an intuitively satisfactory solution. Liz Williams does neither of these things in her Inspector Chen novels. However, I don't think her solution is much better.
Nonetheless, there is much to enjoy. The setting is Singapore 3, a city that is a franchised clone of the original. This is a quite brilliant idea, but we never learn anything more about how this franchising works or who runs it. Instead the stories focus on Inspector Chen, a mild-mannered detective who happens to be married to a demon called Inari and is the resident expert in the Singapore 3 franchise police department on matters supernatural. So when Pearl Tang, the teenage daughter of a rich industrialist, is murdered but her soul fails to reach the celestial shores, who is her distressed mother going to call?
Pearl's disappearance is also of interest to the Ministry of Vice in Hell (she had been a very bad girl), whose lord sends a seneschal, a charming demon called Zhu Irzh, to claim her. Needless to say, his path crosses with Chen's and the two end up working together despite their rather different agendas. Which proves to be useful, as Pearl's misplaced soul leads them into a sinister hellish conspiracy.
It's all perfectly well done and the depiction of hell as a shadowy version of the real world whose inhabitants happen to drink blood rather than beer is good. However, that does illustrate the problem I have with the book, which is that the demons are not demonic enough. Zhu Irzh's thought processes, qualms of conscience and personal dilemmas are exactly those of a human, albeit one with a tail who works for the Minister of Vice. Obviously this is to enable him to function as a character that the reader will like, but it is lazy writing.
The Demon and the City is more of the same, featuring dodgy dowsers, bad Feng Shui and a sinister technology company that is up to no good. Williams makes an unusual move for the second book in a series by packing her chief viewpoint character off on holiday, leaving Zhu Irzh to do most of the work. This proves to be unfortunate, for the head of the technology company, Jhai Teserai, is extremely beautiful, and Irzh is one horny devil.
We also learn more about the Celestial realm and the beings who live there, but once again they come across as humans with a few additional quirks rather than genuinely alien entities. This may reflect the nature of the Chinese mythology that inspired them, but it also makes them less interesting. And unfortunately they are also powerful enough to steal agency from the main characters at vital moments.
Nonetheless, the books are fun. The oriental setting, the plotting (deus-ex-machina moments aside) and the characters are all competently done, and the tongue-in-cheek humour is welcome. If the idea of a chase down the main street of Singapore involving a taxi, a vengeful goddess in a chariot drawn by demon goats and a police car with lights flashing makes you smile, these could be worth a read.
Snake Agent / The Demon and the City - Liz Williams - Nightshade Books, 2008
* * * / * * *
I am not generally keen on books that feature gods, angels or demons as secondary characters. A supernatural entity as the chief villain who must be defeated by mortals is fine - that's pretty much the plot of Lord of the Rings. So are stories where the main characters are gods or have god-like powers, such as the Greek myths or most superhero stories. But stories with human protagonists but deistic or demonic cameos don't really work for me. The problem is the balancing of character actions - logically, the supernatural beings should be running the show and that's usually where such stories end up, with the human protagonists' agency taken away by a Deus ex Machina. You can give the deistic characters mysterious reasons for limiting their interference in human lives, or have the protagonists acquire powers or artifacts that put them on the same level, but neither of these is an intuitively satisfactory solution. Liz Williams does neither of these things in her Inspector Chen novels. However, I don't think her solution is much better.
Nonetheless, there is much to enjoy. The setting is Singapore 3, a city that is a franchised clone of the original. This is a quite brilliant idea, but we never learn anything more about how this franchising works or who runs it. Instead the stories focus on Inspector Chen, a mild-mannered detective who happens to be married to a demon called Inari and is the resident expert in the Singapore 3 franchise police department on matters supernatural. So when Pearl Tang, the teenage daughter of a rich industrialist, is murdered but her soul fails to reach the celestial shores, who is her distressed mother going to call?
Pearl's disappearance is also of interest to the Ministry of Vice in Hell (she had been a very bad girl), whose lord sends a seneschal, a charming demon called Zhu Irzh, to claim her. Needless to say, his path crosses with Chen's and the two end up working together despite their rather different agendas. Which proves to be useful, as Pearl's misplaced soul leads them into a sinister hellish conspiracy.
It's all perfectly well done and the depiction of hell as a shadowy version of the real world whose inhabitants happen to drink blood rather than beer is good. However, that does illustrate the problem I have with the book, which is that the demons are not demonic enough. Zhu Irzh's thought processes, qualms of conscience and personal dilemmas are exactly those of a human, albeit one with a tail who works for the Minister of Vice. Obviously this is to enable him to function as a character that the reader will like, but it is lazy writing.
The Demon and the City is more of the same, featuring dodgy dowsers, bad Feng Shui and a sinister technology company that is up to no good. Williams makes an unusual move for the second book in a series by packing her chief viewpoint character off on holiday, leaving Zhu Irzh to do most of the work. This proves to be unfortunate, for the head of the technology company, Jhai Teserai, is extremely beautiful, and Irzh is one horny devil.
We also learn more about the Celestial realm and the beings who live there, but once again they come across as humans with a few additional quirks rather than genuinely alien entities. This may reflect the nature of the Chinese mythology that inspired them, but it also makes them less interesting. And unfortunately they are also powerful enough to steal agency from the main characters at vital moments.
Nonetheless, the books are fun. The oriental setting, the plotting (deus-ex-machina moments aside) and the characters are all competently done, and the tongue-in-cheek humour is welcome. If the idea of a chase down the main street of Singapore involving a taxi, a vengeful goddess in a chariot drawn by demon goats and a police car with lights flashing makes you smile, these could be worth a read.