A Dead Man's Song Is Surprisingly Cheerful

Yes, it's another book post! I suppose I'll be alternating for as long as I can continue to finish books quickly enough.

First order of business: As far as I can tell, nowhere on the cover of Dead Man's Song, front or back, does it inform the reader this is simply the first part of an at least two-part story. Which would have been helpful information, if only so I'd stop wondering how the heck Jonathan Maberry was going to wrap everything up in the last {insert however many pages were left at that moment}. When all along the answer was that he wasn't. There is sort of an ending, a fateful confrontation between some of the protagonists and one character that had bedeviled them throughout, but the main evil is still very much cruising along, plans still in motion. It's reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back, where the Rebels have been taking it on the chin throughout the whole movie, but at the end you can (maybe) console yourself that at Least Luke and Leia are still free to rescue Han, and oooh, Luke has a robot hand now. That's pretty cool! In a more plotcentric way, it reminds me of a combination of Salem's Lot, It, and The Talisman, if that's of any help to you at all*.

The book itself is centered in a town in Pennsylvania called Pine Deep. Thirty years ago there was a terrible crop blight, then a string of murders, which ended abruptly with the death of a character. Which character's death it was, I'll let the book tell you. Either way, at this point there's another terrible blight, the ghost of a black drifter with a guitar the children called the Bone Man has shown up, and people are dying. There's a malevolent force buried in Dark Hollow consolidating its forces for a big to-do on Halloween (the book starts at the beginning of october, and makes it to Friday the 13th, called Little Halloween by the locals). The townspeople are either unaware anything is happening, don't grasp how dire the situation is, or have some grasp on it, but are responding by getting frequently drunk rather than being, you know, useful.

The problem in question is vampires. Or werewolves. It's a bit muddled. The evil in Dark Hollow appears to be a werewolf, but is somehow turning people into vampires. How it does this, especially since it's buried in the swamp, not actually doing anything itself (it communicates telepathically with its various minions, both vampiric and human), I haven't the slightest, but there it is. Sure, once you have one vampire, it can make others, but how did you make the first vampire? Also, the vampires vary. Some burst into flame in the sun, some don't. Some still have their full cognitive abilities, some are barely as intelligent as your average shambling zombie. Why? No one knows. Seriously, no one in the book has any idea, including the people working for Head Evil Being. All this confusion irritates me.

There's also a teenager who is apparently very special. He's the stepson of Head Evil Being's Renfield, and his father (or the man he thinks is his father) died under mysterious circumstances. Then there's the fact that his stepdad is an abusive, evil jerk, that his real father could be either the Evil Being (which explains him being special) or the poor schmuck that Evil being possessed to do the deed. Then there's the main character, Malcolm Crow, who appears to be the closest thing to an actual father figure, in terms of caring about the kid, trying to help him with his problems, teach him things and so on. Yes, it's My Five Dads, which seems a tad overkill.

There's also a subplot with a fellow who believes the voice of God is telling him to kill the Beast, who has cleverly disguised itself as a kid. I'd pity the poor fool, but everytime he starts thinking to himself how he is the Sword of God, I can't help myself from thinking "The Sword of God needs some serious sharpening". I do wonder whether he was always devoutly religious, or whether hearing this voice made him that way. Not sure whether that answer will be forthcoming, or even if it matters.

So I'm torn. On the negative side, I'm annoyed that this played out as essentially 500 pages of set-up. I'd probably be less annoyed if I'd known that from the start, but I didn't, so there it is. On the positive side, Maberry has made me care about the characters. They're scared and freaked out by the things that are happening, and not all of them handle it well, and not all of them receive the positive support they need, which is probably true to life. They do things they shouldn't because they think they need to prove something to themselves, or because it makes perfect sense to them at the time. By and large, characters are actually exercising some common sense, and only freaking out and losing their heads at moments when that would be understandable, which is nice to see. It's hard to root for really stupid people. At this point, I'm not sure whether I'll hunt down the next book or not. It's supposed to be out already, but I don't know that I care that much.

* Not that the similarities I'm seeing are exclusive to those books, or that I think Maberry is ripping off Stephen King, and in the case of The Talisman, Peter Straub. It's just those are the books certain circumstances remind me of. You know, long buried evil from main character's childhood returns, supernatural army forming, one special kid that needs sage guidance and protection to save his loved one.