Black Static

First order of business, an interview with me conducted by Michael Mitchell has just been posted over at The NightmaRevue.com, so if you're just gagging to know who I think writes the best sentences (it could be you - you'll never know if you don't read the interview) and who I regard as overrated, then click on the first link below and you'll discover the answers to both those questions and whatever other twaddle I could come up with.

Second order of business, we got sent the hardback edition of Fathom by Cherie Priest a long, long time ago, and I read it and enjoyed it, but a window of opportunity to run my review in Black Static just never came around, not even when the release of a paperback edition gave the review an extended shelf life. And now, with an anthology special planned for the October issue, we can't use the review until December at the earliest, by which time even the paperback will be over nine months old, and so I've decided to post it below (and besides, I've got nothing else to write about). Enjoy.

FATHOM

Cherie Priest

(Tor paperback, 384pp, $15.99)

Nia goes to stay with her wealthy cousin Bernice, but the latter implicates her in the murder of her stepfather, and when Nia refuses to keep silent about the crime she too becomes a target. She flees into the sea and Bernice follows, where the two of them lose their lives, or at least that is how it appears. Bernice is taken by the fierce water elemental Arahab, who transforms her into a super powered being. Arahab plans to wake Leviathan and bring an end to the mortal world, but she must use cat's-paws such as Bernice and the eighteenth century pirate Jose to do her bidding. Nia meanwhile has been imprisoned inside a statue and is also being transformed, at the behest of an unknown earth deity called Mossfeaster. Nia is released and uses her powers to thwart the plans of Bernice, whose attempt to betray Arahab has gone fatefully awry. Pursued by the water elemental, the two women must forge an uneasy alliance to save both themselves and the world from Arahab's vengeance. Nia and Mossfeaster are aided by Sam, a fire inspector who simply wanted to complete his paperwork and now finds himself pivotal in a battle between supernatural forces.

I started out not especially drawn into this book, but by the end I felt it was the best I've yet seen from Priest. There are many reasons why, not least the creation of a world of elementals, with individual abilities and distinct agendas, such as the Greek fire elemental who puts in a cameo appearance and most obviously the splendidly evil Arahab, whose demonstrations of power are among the book's highlights. The plot has many twists and turns and never fails to hold the interest, but central to it all is the antipathy between Nia and Bernice. The former is a fundamentally good person, cast adrift in the world through no fault of her own, while the latter is multi-faceted and far more than the evil stereotype she might have become in less skilled hands. Slow to build, the book is racing by its final pages, with Arahab grown in stature to monstrous proportions and the struggle to calm Leviathan an edge of the seat tussle. The only time it slows down is when the human characters take centre stage, with such things as Sam's run in with a bunch of Satanists, and his troubles with fellow fire inspector Dave providing an almost comic and welcome respite from the relentless action elsewhere.

This isn't an iconoclastic or genre transcending work of fiction, but it is an exciting story told with relish by a writer who is getting better with each book, and the level of invention and lush descriptive passages in Fathom bode well for Priest's future.