Rob Thurman, Moonshine (ROC, 2007)
Ms. Rob Thurman's (yes, Ms.) initial novel Nightlife was a splendidly original and twisted view of the world through the eyes of Caliban Leandros, the offspring of a human witch and an Auphe lord. Once the top of the supernatural food chain, the Auph had lost control with the unchecked spread of humanity. They wanted it back, and had come up with a plan to wipe out most of humanity and eat the rest. The Auphe were not only nasty but evil -- a distinction Cal makes very clearly. He doesn't mind nasty, in its place. He himself was deliberately bred to provide a hybrid bridge to the human world for the Auphe. With his elder half-brother Nikos -- whose devotion, fidelity, weapons skills and Zen calm make one wonder if their mother slept with angels as well -- Caliban not only resisted his dread sire's plans, he managed to render the Auphe extinct. Happy ending all around, and the brothers Leandros were left free and easy in the Big Apple. Nightlife was a white-knuckle ride through a wonderfully warped New York, and Moonshine is even better.
Now that the world will not end, Nikos and Cal still have to make a living. With a skill set developed mostly to prevent Cal from being kidnapped by Auphe, they are not widely employable. But they can really do security. In Thurman's New York -- where the human population is almost outnumbered by werewolves, boggles, trolls and all the other kindred of the Otherworld -- they find a niche. When Moonshine opens, they are pursuing the first assignment of their fledgling security agency. A giant, gainfully and clandestinely employed in plain sight at a carnival, has discovered an infestation of bodachs. Bodachs eat children. He hires Nikos and Cal to get rid of them.
Thurman continues with the fascinating first-person voice of Caliban, simultaneously gritty and vulnerable. She has further polished her distinctive blend of hard-boiled detective idiom, black humor and silky film noir prose, and skillfully leads the reader into continuous emotional ambushes. Moonshine begins with one of the funniest riffs I have ever read on the basic horror of clowns, and one is still giggling as Cal chases a bodach in a clown suit through a carnival at midnight. When he catches and dispatches it, therefore, one is just as horrified as he is to discover the bodach's victim: a little girl still in her jammies, smelling of baby shampoo -- and horribly dead.
After that, a security gig for gangsters seems almost wholesome to Cal. The Kin are the werewolf Mafia (It's New York. Everyone has a Mafia.) and a minor capo named Cerberus wants to dig up some dirt on a rival to justify taking him out. It looks like a simple enough assignment, but the internal politics of the Kin are much more convoluted and dangerous than even the Leandros expect. They need to infiltrate the werewolf nightclub, Moonshine, where human Nikos can't expect to pass. Cal's scent carries the intimidating tang of his Auphe father, so he goes in aided by Promise, Nikos' elegant vampire lover and the third business partner in their new agency. It's all sensible and by the book -- until the assignment embroils them in such violent literal overkill that a major gang war seems imminent.
And at this juncture, Georgina -- teenaged seer and probably Cal's own true love -- is kidnapped. Who did it? What do they want? Or is Georgina, with her second sight, the actual prey? It all intertwines more and more deeply with both the complex politics of the werewolves and Caliban's past. That past is not cooperating in lying down and dying -- the rest of the book is an irresistibly wild ride and kept serving up surprises right to the end.
Thurman is now juggling multiple themes in the saga of the Leandros, and her skills are very much up to the task. All the characters, both principals and supporting, are complex and detailed, and they are continuing to evolve through this book. Robin Goodfellow -- the amoral puck who makes his living selling used cars -- is shown in sharp and sympathetic contrast when compared to a really nasty relative. The troll under the Brooklyn Bridge was a triumph of horror in the first book, but Thurman brings him back and manages to make him a figure of tragedy as well.
Her best portrayal is the Kin. Initially, she presents them, through Cal's eyes, as not only abhuman but subhuman -- hairy, smelly low-lives, possessing all the faults of both dogs and men but the virtues of neither. Thurman never succumbs to the easy temptation of revealing them as "just these guys, you know?" They stay non-human, but during the course of the story she succeeds in delineating a culture and ethic that reveals even the most horrific werewolf as a complete person rather than a cartoon. The addition of a werewolf cub, who is emphatically not cute but is endearing, helps a lot.
Sequels are axiomatically problematical, and every author fears getting trapped into a static series. Moonshine, although it refers freely to Nightlife, does stand on its own and even improves on the story line.
