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books2022-04-22 01:18 pm
honigfrosch) wrote in books2022-04-22 01:18 pm
Book Review: Hammers On Bone (Cassandra Khaw, 2016)
[crossposted from my journal X]
What the Blurb says:
This book is simultaneously too short and too long. It's also overwrought and, unless you have memorised some Lovecraftian wiki pages, quite confusing. It took me three days — three days! — to get through the measly 103 pages (68 if you read it as an ebook.)
Where do I even start.
Alright: the Noir narration is a gimmick. There is no reason for it to be in the story. We find out that the setting is the 21st century (one of the children watches Peppa Pig, Persons thinks about getting a Tesla) and it's implied that the vernacular is a remnant from Persons' host body but that makes no sense either. You adapt to whatever's current, it sneaks in whether you like it or not. So either change the language (loses the gimmick) or turn back the time for your setting (more work to make it believable,) but Khaw chose neither and things never quite fit together, instead I got pulled out of the story all the time.
Then there's the writing style itself, the narrative voice. A yard sale of similes, a flea market of adjectives, wearing you down like a 200-pound metaphor swinging 50 kilograms of additional baggage, then finishing you off with absurd alliterations. If it was consistently good, it would still be repetitive. Unfortunately, it's not consistently good, and on top of that often reads like parody. The fourth sentence of Chapter 1 goes 'Usually, it's dames trussed up in whalebone and lace that come slinking through my door.' You see that and you settle down for some nice chapters of ridiculous pulp entertainment, right? But the rest of the book wants you to take it seriously, so that's another tonal clash.
And no, it's not that good. One, there's only so many ways you can describe something as rotten, salt-water-ish, cancerous and the like before it gets stale. Two, a lot of the comparisons make no sense. Some of my favourites:
'Anything, rattled the man that once lived in this skull, rags and bones and memory, but somehow still stubborn as capitalism.'
'[The little boy] doesn't hesitate when I stretch out my arms to collect him, crashing into me like a Russian gangster's scarred-over fist.'
'The cry of the gun is loud as the death of stars.'
'He hated his stepfather, hated him like Hitler hated the face in the mirror.'
I mean, what can you say to that.
(And I must not forget to mention there's an "INTERLUDE" chapter of four sentences that achieves absolutely nothing. It just sits there.)
Which leaves me with the plot, and I wish I could say that it was captivating, or clever, or satisfying. It has a twist at the end, but considering that the number of characters with speaking roles is so small, even if you didn't guess the exact nature of it, you'd still suspect that a reveal was waiting around the corner. If you are familiar with Lovecraftian lore, you might enjoy it more, and have the lightbulbs in your head go off much sooner. As I am not a Lovecraft nerd, I got nothing out of this, and to be frank, I think having the story not be so tightly connected to the lore would have made it better. It would have worked just as well as a story of alien fungus infection, or ghosts hopping into different bodies, or demonic rituals, whatever. The rest is an overlong build-up for a confrontation between good-guy monster P.I. and bad-guy tentacle stepdad, just as the blurb promised, but it does not feel like the massive show-down you expect. The narrator even comments on it, and there is an in-world explanation, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. As a whole, the story drags and meanders, but because we never get a real sense of place nor of the characters, it still feels rushed. There are moments I appreciated, but they needed more room to breathe, whereas the excess fat on the descriptions and sub-plots needed to get trimmed.
It's simply not enough. I do not hate this book the way a Russian's capitalism hates Hitler's mirror, but I would not recommend it.
What the Blurb says:
John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.
He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.
As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker than the expected social evils. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.
This book is simultaneously too short and too long. It's also overwrought and, unless you have memorised some Lovecraftian wiki pages, quite confusing. It took me three days — three days! — to get through the measly 103 pages (68 if you read it as an ebook.)
Where do I even start.
Alright: the Noir narration is a gimmick. There is no reason for it to be in the story. We find out that the setting is the 21st century (one of the children watches Peppa Pig, Persons thinks about getting a Tesla) and it's implied that the vernacular is a remnant from Persons' host body but that makes no sense either. You adapt to whatever's current, it sneaks in whether you like it or not. So either change the language (loses the gimmick) or turn back the time for your setting (more work to make it believable,) but Khaw chose neither and things never quite fit together, instead I got pulled out of the story all the time.
Then there's the writing style itself, the narrative voice. A yard sale of similes, a flea market of adjectives, wearing you down like a 200-pound metaphor swinging 50 kilograms of additional baggage, then finishing you off with absurd alliterations. If it was consistently good, it would still be repetitive. Unfortunately, it's not consistently good, and on top of that often reads like parody. The fourth sentence of Chapter 1 goes 'Usually, it's dames trussed up in whalebone and lace that come slinking through my door.' You see that and you settle down for some nice chapters of ridiculous pulp entertainment, right? But the rest of the book wants you to take it seriously, so that's another tonal clash.
And no, it's not that good. One, there's only so many ways you can describe something as rotten, salt-water-ish, cancerous and the like before it gets stale. Two, a lot of the comparisons make no sense. Some of my favourites:
'Anything, rattled the man that once lived in this skull, rags and bones and memory, but somehow still stubborn as capitalism.'
'[The little boy] doesn't hesitate when I stretch out my arms to collect him, crashing into me like a Russian gangster's scarred-over fist.'
'The cry of the gun is loud as the death of stars.'
'He hated his stepfather, hated him like Hitler hated the face in the mirror.'
I mean, what can you say to that.
(And I must not forget to mention there's an "INTERLUDE" chapter of four sentences that achieves absolutely nothing. It just sits there.)
Which leaves me with the plot, and I wish I could say that it was captivating, or clever, or satisfying. It has a twist at the end, but considering that the number of characters with speaking roles is so small, even if you didn't guess the exact nature of it, you'd still suspect that a reveal was waiting around the corner. If you are familiar with Lovecraftian lore, you might enjoy it more, and have the lightbulbs in your head go off much sooner. As I am not a Lovecraft nerd, I got nothing out of this, and to be frank, I think having the story not be so tightly connected to the lore would have made it better. It would have worked just as well as a story of alien fungus infection, or ghosts hopping into different bodies, or demonic rituals, whatever. The rest is an overlong build-up for a confrontation between good-guy monster P.I. and bad-guy tentacle stepdad, just as the blurb promised, but it does not feel like the massive show-down you expect. The narrator even comments on it, and there is an in-world explanation, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. As a whole, the story drags and meanders, but because we never get a real sense of place nor of the characters, it still feels rushed. There are moments I appreciated, but they needed more room to breathe, whereas the excess fat on the descriptions and sub-plots needed to get trimmed.
It's simply not enough. I do not hate this book the way a Russian's capitalism hates Hitler's mirror, but I would not recommend it.