The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin
My rating: 4/5 cats
more genre-smooshery!
a supernatural post-apocalyptic detective story with both horror and mythological elements. phew.
also: a lot of graphic and grotesque descriptions, so the squeamish should back slowly away from this review, because this book rolls around, descriptively, in corpse-decomposition, what happens to a body when it falls into a grinding device, and how it feels to go wrist-deep into busy and bitey roaches…
all good things. in books.
it’s between three and four stars cats for me, but i was feeling generous.
so, the earth’s polarity has switched, somehow (which we are told first-page in a pretty clunky expositional “editorial piece”), causing planes to drop out of the sky, crippling telecommunications, ruining the world economy, and also, somehow, giving each and every person on earth their own ghost which follows them every step of their day, watching them live their lives, and driving many people quite mad. usually, the ghost is someone known to the attached party, but our protag, detective mariani, does not know his young boy-ghost, and he does not want to, because at the moment all of this pole-switching and ghost-acquiring happened, when the world was in complete chaos, he had no way of knowing this child was a ghost, and, swerving to avoid him, hit and crippled a young girl. which anyone else would have written off as the unfortunate but understandable side effect of the confusing situation, but over which he feels soul-killing guilt, and he is still paying off the girl’s father, even though he is himself in horrible financial shape, and most of his other transactions are on the barter system, like prison.
he is the head of the spookiest of all police departments in australia, which investigates occult crimes, mostly “my ghost made me do it,” etc. it has become somewhat of a joke to the rest of the squad, he has gone through many partners, and his guilt and empathy cause him to make decisions that are less-than-great for his career.
that’s a lot of plot, but there is a lot going on here.
so imma rush the rest – young girls start showing up dead with occult markings, there is a blind seer, an arcane scholar, a tiny amputee, dead animals, a mysterious wealthy woman, a suspicious caregiver, a skinny chauffeur, a pathological masturbator, a tranny hooker, police corruption, a disgraced doctor, and a giant fucking bird.
seriously – it is a giant stew of a novel, and i hardly did it any justice here, but once all its flavors blend, it is indeed a delicious treat.
