Just finished Mike Carey’s second Felix Castor novel, Vicious Circle.
Castor, in case you don’t know, is an exorcist for hire, a growth industry since the human race realised that things that go bump in the night are very, very real. You’d think that such a world-changing event would make Castor’s life easier, but you’d be wrong.
The Castor novels are taut page-turners that combine fantasy and noir with a very British feel. Yes, there are folk that compare them to the Dresden Files but I find Castor’s world a far richer experience. Carey’s world-building is superb, with everything coming back to ghosts, even stock monsters such as werewolves. Carey’s loup-garous are ghosts who have chosen to possess and reshape animals’ body.
In this particular tale, Castor is hired to find a missing girl – albeit one who is already dead. Meanwhile, Juliet, a succubus who is trying to build herself a new life on Earth rather in the depths of hell, asks for advice on one of her own cases. Strange things are going down at a local church. Are the two cases linked? And what of his friend Rafi, left sharing his body with a particularly nasty demon after a failed summoning years before?
There’s a lot to like here. The first novel in the series was enjoyable, but this was so much better. Tight plot, edgy characters, snappy banter and lashings of good old British cynicism. You can certainly see Carey’s Hellblazer roots here. Someone should be adapting these for screen.
Next on the reading pile is The Strange Case of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder, although Tom Pollock‘s The City’s Son is vying for attention too…
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