An explosion behind Donal blew the steel doors open. The percussive pressure hammered Donal through the opening, back into the chamber where the mages stood.
He fell atop dead children.
In the doorway, a pale figure stood with a heavy hexzooka over one shoulder. Beyond, revealed in the great atrium, a riderless bone motorcycle was harrying prey, darting at a great scaled reptile that was spitting in fear.
- Title: Bone Song
- Author: John Meaney
- Genre: Urban Fantasy/Noir Thriller
- Year: 2008
A month or so ago I picked up John Meaney’s Bone Song as a complete impulse purchase at the book store. This is a comparatively rare event for me as, generally speaking, I have at least heard of the books and authors I end up purchasing. This was not the case with Meaney or his series (it was book two, Black Blood, that initially drew me, but I shelved it and grabbed the first installment), neither of which had appeared as blips on my book radar. But the covers drew me, the aesthetic appealed, and the premise of a noir-horror-action mash-up was too good to miss.
Bone Song follows police lieutenant Donal Riordan through a skewed alternate world mystery involving black magic, assassinations, necromancy, and conspiracy as he tries to ferret out the perpetrators of a series of murders. The victims are all artists and the motive, as becomes apparent, is to capture the dreams within the bones of these dead visionaries. You see, in Donal’s world, death is an energy that can be used to power an entire city, and sorcery coexists with technology in a weird blend of fantasy and modernity.
Tristopolis, the city in which most of the action of the story takes place, is the real standout of the book. From its perpetually purple sky to the giant skull that dominates the city center, its streets with names like Orb Sinister through which wraith-powered vehicles speed, the necrofusion piles full of bones that act as power generators for the place, and the Bone Lattice that functions as a kind of internet archive that can only be read by initiates in a cult of suffering, its a refreshingly off-kilter and fun mixture of elements. And that’s just for starters. There are half-humans and ghostly prostitutes, black-blooded undead ‘zombies’ and ambulances with bat wings, mutants, monsters, and a pair of axe-wielding dwarves on a bicycle built for two. It’s a mad world in which Death seems to be the principle deity, elevators work because incorporeal beings float up and down the shaft, and the music of bones can be a motivation for murder. Meaney deploys an expert touch in parceling out these elements as well, and reserves the revelation that his world is weirder than you think for a point in the novel when the plot kicks into higher gear — a really masterly touch. And all of this hocus pocus stuff is underlined with a healthy dose of logic and explanation — and here Meaney’s roots as a writer of hard science fiction come to the fore to give his fantastical world a necessary plausible edge that gives it a more grounded feel than the wilder elements might suggest.
Donal fails in his initial attempt to stop one of these assassinations, and through his failure comes to join a special investigative team and learn more about the insidious threat of the ‘Black Circle.’ Here we are introduced to additional point of view characters, and the action of the plot splits along the lines of their parallel investigations — and they even begin working against one another. The investigation is not nearly as engaging as the imagination on display in even the incidental details of the world, and it’s the elaboration of the world itself that keeps the pages turning through some of the less compelling scenes. And there are a few niggles of character as well, perhaps most especially the somewhat instantaneous romance that develops between Donal and the commander of the special unit he joins, Laura Steele — who happens to be a zombie. Like some of the plot elements of the book it felt mostly like authorial fiat. A final criticism would be an ending that felt rushed, and didn’t quite hit the emotional beat that would justify its inclusion.
But such criticisms do not bar a recommendation of Bone Song. It’s a fast, fun read in which originality and style more than makes up for some rough edges, and it should appeal to lovers of detective noir and urban fantasy. I’ll certainly be picking up the sequel when it hits paperback, and perhaps look into some of Meaney’s science fiction in the future as well.
