bluegargantua

Hi,

So I just finished up Snake Agent by Liz Williams. The back cover blurb says "John Constantine meets Chow Yun-Fat in this near-future occult thriller", and that's not really accurate. This is more like...a Law and Order spin-off meets Master Ten Ox.

The near-future part is right. In the future, in the city of Singapore Three (see, Singapore is a franchise now and new ones are opening up all over), there's Chen Wei. He's the police department's occult specialist. Modern technology has sped things up and the Imperial Bureaucracy of Heaven and Hell have stepped up to the plate as well to keep pace. So the supernatural worms its way in a bit closer to the surface even with advanced bioweb networks and the like. When the crazy stuff gets out of control, Inspector Chen goes in to take care of things. He's got special clearance to enter Heaven or Hell and lots of magic mojo because he's the sworn servant of Kuan Yin.

Although that goddess is a wee bit unhappy with him because he helped smuggle a demon out of Hell and then wound up marrying her and...yeah...complicated.

Anyway, the book had a good story, the characters were well done, and it managed to actually turn out one or two suprise twists near the end which I hadn't expected at all. It certainly kept me reading it.

So overall, this book is recommended. If you liked the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher, you'd probably really enjoy these a fair amount too.

later
Tom