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Because I needed to fall down YET ANOTHER rabbit hole ...
I read Greg van Eekhout's California Bones this weekend, the first book in his Daniel Blackland trilogy. It's very good - wildly creative urban fantasy/alternate history in which "osteomancers" consume the bones of extinct animals to absorb their powers, whether it's a real-world ability (swimming and breathing underwater from an aquatic creature, strength of a mammoth, etc) or a magical one: dragon bones for flight and fire, the bones of an invisible mystic serpent to avoid pursuers, etc.
The La Brea Tar Pits are consequently the magical equivalent of a major oil strike, leading to a vastly altered world in which Southern and Northern California are independent countries, LA is a canal city a la Venice, and also a horrifying dystopia in which magicians eat other magicians to consume their magic, and the city in general is a dystopian police state.
The book is a heist novel, with the protagonist and his friends trying to pull off an impossible break-in of the vaults of the city's absolute dictator, the superhumanly powerful Hierarch.
Of course, in my classic way - h/t to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart for describing this phenomenon perfectly - I immediately found the worst person in the canon and made a beeline for them. This is not, fortunately, the Hierarch, who is a straight-up villain, but rather, the Javert-like character who is hunting the heist gang, and his partner, a human hound who can smell magic.
I still wasn't that far gone and in fact was kind of uncertain whether I wanted to go ahead and read the next books in the series, because they are pretty dark, so I checked out the fic on AO3 and found that:
a) All of it features my problematic faves, so clearly I'm not the only one who latched onto them. (And in fairness, I can see why; I'll talk more about it under the spoiler cut, but they're definite fandom catnip.)
b) It's all extremely good!
I was expecting the usual small-fandom experience where there's 1 fic in Portuguese, 2 Harry Potter crossovers, and 1 drabble that's part of someone's 200-fandom drabble collection ... but no! There are only four fics, but they're all excellent, they hit my buttons delightfully, and while they did spoil me for some later developments in the series, they also took me from lukewarm about whether to read onward, to slamming the hold button on the books at the library and then, um, rereading about 12 times every scene in this book in which these characters appear and thinking about nothing else for the last couple of days.
It's actually kind of an interesting phenomenon because the characters didn't mash down my id buttons on this level until after reading the fic. The book has a very emotionally restrained, kind of bleak style, and I think it took the extra emotionality of the fic to push me over the edge. But once I went, I went hard.
Under the cut gets pretty spoilery, especially for the first half of the book, but LOOK, I have to talk about them or I will EXPLODE.
So Gabriel Argent is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Evil Dystopian Ministry of Whatever. He is careful, conscientious, an enormous nerd (he does math in his head to calm himself down), very annoyed by incompetence and slacking, and tries to do his job to the best of his ability and very carefully not think any more than he has to about the ethics of everything he's doing.
He occupies a weird, slippery place in the Lawful Good to Lawful Evil spectrum. I would call him Lawful Neutral, except that increasingly, as the book goes along and Gabriel keeps running headlong into all the various ways that his orders and his moral compass conflict, and gets increasingly pissed off about the dystopia he lives in, he doesn't decide to stop following the rules, he instead decides to Change The Rules so that he can keep following better rules, even if it means murdering his way up the hierarchy to reach a high enough level that he can change the government so that it serves the people instead of the other way around.
So that's Gabriel. He's hunting the heist team protagonists, and in order to do this, Gabriel needs the services of Max, who is a magic-sniffing hound.
Since they're living in a horrifying dystopia, hounds are human beings who are taken from their families as children, brutally trained until there's little left of their original personalities (in theory), and kept naked in cages except when they're taken out on collars and leashes to hunt down magic users. They have no rights and are for all intents and purposes considered animals and treated as such. Max is scheduled to be executed ("put down") in two days because he killed his last handler, but as he's older than most of the hounds, he's the only available one who is trained to trace the unusual and rare form of magic that the hero uses.
Max is smart, sarcastic, bleakly cynical, and very clearly not an animal, and as soon as Gabriel realizes this, he also realizes that the way to deal with Max and not go the way of his last handler is by treating him like a person.
(It's worth pointing out that Max is not actually doglike in any way except a heightened sense of smell. He's a human being whose legal status is "dog.")
Understandably, he's an enormous psychological mess.
Gabriel files paperwork indicating that he needs Max for the current case and Max isn't going back to the kennels and his scheduled death until Gabriel is done with him, however long that takes. He also gives Max normal clothes (a spare set of his own, technically) and ordinary food (hounds in the kennels are fed a "nutritionally balanced slurry") and basically, well, treats him exactly as a partner instead of a dog. Max continues to be a sarcastic nihilist with a death wish.
Things go on like this until Gabriel gets himself on the bad side of the regime (basically by scrupulously following protocol and not taking into account that he's working for a horrifyingly corrupt dictatorship) and they end up on the run, being hunted by the authorities. When it becomes clear that the police are killing and terrorizing everyone Gabriel's ever known to get him to give himself up, Gabriel tries to do the noble thing for once, but Max is having none of it.
SO YEAH. I mean, I'm not going to spoil the entire thing (this takes us about halfway through the book) but they are absolute Sholio-bait id catnip, especially as Gabriel increasingly develops a very weird, nerdy, rules-obsessed version of a conscience and starts to act on it, and from the spoilers I've gotten from fic, there is a ton of excellent loyalty kink ahead for them as well, in the books I haven't read yet. Not that I'm checking several times a day to see if my holds have come in yet or anything.
The La Brea Tar Pits are consequently the magical equivalent of a major oil strike, leading to a vastly altered world in which Southern and Northern California are independent countries, LA is a canal city a la Venice, and also a horrifying dystopia in which magicians eat other magicians to consume their magic, and the city in general is a dystopian police state.
The book is a heist novel, with the protagonist and his friends trying to pull off an impossible break-in of the vaults of the city's absolute dictator, the superhumanly powerful Hierarch.
Of course, in my classic way - h/t to
rionaleonhart for describing this phenomenon perfectly - I immediately found the worst person in the canon and made a beeline for them. This is not, fortunately, the Hierarch, who is a straight-up villain, but rather, the Javert-like character who is hunting the heist gang, and his partner, a human hound who can smell magic.I still wasn't that far gone and in fact was kind of uncertain whether I wanted to go ahead and read the next books in the series, because they are pretty dark, so I checked out the fic on AO3 and found that:
a) All of it features my problematic faves, so clearly I'm not the only one who latched onto them. (And in fairness, I can see why; I'll talk more about it under the spoiler cut, but they're definite fandom catnip.)
b) It's all extremely good!
I was expecting the usual small-fandom experience where there's 1 fic in Portuguese, 2 Harry Potter crossovers, and 1 drabble that's part of someone's 200-fandom drabble collection ... but no! There are only four fics, but they're all excellent, they hit my buttons delightfully, and while they did spoil me for some later developments in the series, they also took me from lukewarm about whether to read onward, to slamming the hold button on the books at the library and then, um, rereading about 12 times every scene in this book in which these characters appear and thinking about nothing else for the last couple of days.
It's actually kind of an interesting phenomenon because the characters didn't mash down my id buttons on this level until after reading the fic. The book has a very emotionally restrained, kind of bleak style, and I think it took the extra emotionality of the fic to push me over the edge. But once I went, I went hard.
Under the cut gets pretty spoilery, especially for the first half of the book, but LOOK, I have to talk about them or I will EXPLODE.
So Gabriel Argent is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Evil Dystopian Ministry of Whatever. He is careful, conscientious, an enormous nerd (he does math in his head to calm himself down), very annoyed by incompetence and slacking, and tries to do his job to the best of his ability and very carefully not think any more than he has to about the ethics of everything he's doing.
He occupies a weird, slippery place in the Lawful Good to Lawful Evil spectrum. I would call him Lawful Neutral, except that increasingly, as the book goes along and Gabriel keeps running headlong into all the various ways that his orders and his moral compass conflict, and gets increasingly pissed off about the dystopia he lives in, he doesn't decide to stop following the rules, he instead decides to Change The Rules so that he can keep following better rules, even if it means murdering his way up the hierarchy to reach a high enough level that he can change the government so that it serves the people instead of the other way around.
So that's Gabriel. He's hunting the heist team protagonists, and in order to do this, Gabriel needs the services of Max, who is a magic-sniffing hound.
Since they're living in a horrifying dystopia, hounds are human beings who are taken from their families as children, brutally trained until there's little left of their original personalities (in theory), and kept naked in cages except when they're taken out on collars and leashes to hunt down magic users. They have no rights and are for all intents and purposes considered animals and treated as such. Max is scheduled to be executed ("put down") in two days because he killed his last handler, but as he's older than most of the hounds, he's the only available one who is trained to trace the unusual and rare form of magic that the hero uses.
Max is smart, sarcastic, bleakly cynical, and very clearly not an animal, and as soon as Gabriel realizes this, he also realizes that the way to deal with Max and not go the way of his last handler is by treating him like a person.
Gabriel stepped up close to him. He reached for [Max's] neck. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said, unnecessarily perhaps. Max made no movement. Gabriel unbuckled his collar. "Shall we continue?"
Max's throat moved as he swallowed. "They'll make you put the collar back on when you return me to the kennels." Then he turned and resumed sniffing.
(It's worth pointing out that Max is not actually doglike in any way except a heightened sense of smell. He's a human being whose legal status is "dog.")
Understandably, he's an enormous psychological mess.
Gabriel descended the stairs with Max trailing him. Max moved tentatively.
"You're used to leading, not following," Gabriel said.
Max looked at him.
"You can walk ahead if you want."
"I don't know where I'm going," Max said. "If you're not going to keep me on a leash, you could at least tell me where we're going."
"Fair enough. But can you tell me one thing?"
"I can tell you if I know it. I don't know much. I'm a hound."
"Why did you kill your last handler?"
Max's answer came without a moment of hesitation. "I wanted to die."
Gabriel found himself frozen, halfway down the stone steps. In the dim light, Max's eyes were the brightest things in the stairway.
"Why, Max?"
"I thought I already said, Inspector Argent. I'm a hound."
"Do you still want to die?"
"Not before I've had a chance to pee," Max said.
Gabriel nodded. "Then you have something to live for. Come on."
Gabriel files paperwork indicating that he needs Max for the current case and Max isn't going back to the kennels and his scheduled death until Gabriel is done with him, however long that takes. He also gives Max normal clothes (a spare set of his own, technically) and ordinary food (hounds in the kennels are fed a "nutritionally balanced slurry") and basically, well, treats him exactly as a partner instead of a dog. Max continues to be a sarcastic nihilist with a death wish.
"Is my time up?" Max asked. "Are they coming for me?" He still didn't seem to care much whether he lived or died.
"They better not be. I filed all the right paperwork. You just stay here and keep working on our problem while I see what's going on. And if anyone asks, we are doing *anything* except contemplating the death of our leader."
"What leader?" Max said.
"Good ..."
Gabriel checked himself. He'd almost said "Good dog."
"Good," he said again, shutting the office door behind him.
Things go on like this until Gabriel gets himself on the bad side of the regime (basically by scrupulously following protocol and not taking into account that he's working for a horrifyingly corrupt dictatorship) and they end up on the run, being hunted by the authorities. When it becomes clear that the police are killing and terrorizing everyone Gabriel's ever known to get him to give himself up, Gabriel tries to do the noble thing for once, but Max is having none of it.
"What are you doing?" Max snarled. He sensed Gabriel's intentions before Gabriel could even act on them.
"I'm going to turn myself in."
"They'll kill you."
"Not right away." He took a step down the sidewalk. Max gripped his shoulder and spun him around.
"You don't have to come with me," Gabriel said, calm, despite the painful pressure of Max's fingers. "While they're busy arresting me, you can hide."
Max tightened his grip. "I have no friends. No money. No place to go. Without you, I'll be tracked down and killed. With you, I have a chance. A very small, very sad chance. I need you."
SO YEAH. I mean, I'm not going to spoil the entire thing (this takes us about halfway through the book) but they are absolute Sholio-bait id catnip, especially as Gabriel increasingly develops a very weird, nerdy, rules-obsessed version of a conscience and starts to act on it, and from the spoilers I've gotten from fic, there is a ton of excellent loyalty kink ahead for them as well, in the books I haven't read yet. Not that I'm checking several times a day to see if my holds have come in yet or anything.
no subject
Well, I said, partisanly, they should have.
This makes me wonder if it was only ever supposed to be a trilogy or if he would have written more books in that world if the sales had supported it.
I was curious if it was even supposed to be a trilogy or just evolved into one, since California Bones works so nicely as a standalone and there's a ten-year timeskip before Pacific Fire properly picks up. (Thanks to scarcity, I am still waiting for the library to furnish me with Dragon Coast, which is why I have no comments about it as yet.) But I would be curious, too, if there were further books planned in one form or another. I just found the prequel comic.
The third book ends in a perfectly fine place for a forever ending, but it also feels like there are various things introduced that should have been dealt with and weren't. (Such as the half of the Hierarch's heart that Daniel gives to Gabriel at the end of California Bones, which I don't think is ever mentioned again. It feels like a loose end for some future plotline that never happened.)
It’s mentioned in Pacific Fire insofar as we are reminded of the exchange, but we still aren't told what Gabriel did with his half of the heart, which feels like seriously missing information. I can't imagine he ate it—he'd be a different kind of person and a different kind of magician if he had—but then, what, it's kicking around in a safe somewhere? Inquiring minds want to know!
It's so nice when that happens! The opposite way - when the extended version is weak compared to the short story - is definitely sadder.
It happened once memorably with a story/novel by Tanith Lee and I was extremely sad.
Even freeing and protecting Max has a pragmatic reason, since he needs Max for the job.
And having no idea of the loyalty he will inspire in Max thereby, or at least the cautious tolerance that eventually develops into loyalty and saves both of their lives. Interpersonally, Gabriel is an amazing combination of chessmaster and clueless.
He *would* have gone on like that if he hadn't ended up on the wrong side of the regime not due to revolutionary tendencies but because he was trying to do things according to procedure while operating in a level of the bureaucracy where things run more on corruption and power grabs instead.
I feel like he might have maxed out eventually on the injustice and inefficiency of the entire system, but I agree it might have taken longer if he hadn't accidentally backed into becoming a major player instead of a minor functionary, which I also admire about him.
(The detail that he keeps quiet because his mother never screamed is so chilling and resonant and awful.)
(Every now and then the narrative glances off the iceberg of really well organized trauma that seems to comprise a not insubstantial percentage of Gabriel Argent and of necessity it doesn't get as much time in the books so far as Daniel's emotional issues, but I still appreciate when it happens. He's like eight different coping mechanisms with no hobbies in a good suit. And he's right that he's a terrible delegator and probably exaggerating only slightly that the entire kingdom will collapse into civil war or just a haunted wasteland if he takes a vacation, but also someone really needs to make him take a vacation and by someone I mean Max.)
And in a way it's not even moral decency that leads him to step into the power vacuum, or certainly not only that - although you do get the impression that he's a fairly decent person deep down, despite the monstrous things he's been responsible for - but at least as much just that he hits his snapping point on watching things being Done Wrong.
I'm pretty sure his moral decency is the limit of his patience for things being done wrong. I love his speech to Mulholland right before assassinating him, however nervous and pompous: "There is the idea of running things for no other reason than things need to be run." God-kings may get in the habit of exercising power for power's sake, big whoop. Cities still need stable infrastructure and people need not to have their electricity turned off for no reason at all. He's not wrong.
In general, for as little exact description as you get of either of them in this book, there's a surprisingly strong impression of what they look like, at least in the broad strokes.
Has anyone done decent fanart for these books that you've seen?
no subject
Oh, that's actually a really good point. The end of California Bones does feel like a satisfying ending, whereas the next two are more like parts one and two of a cohesive story. (I really hope your library book comes in soon! I'm looking forward to discussing that one!)
I just found the prequel comic.
Oh!! Thank you! I knew there was a comic but I had no idea it could be read online for free. Hmm, I have ... questions about Daniel's character design (he looks about 40) but that's a perfect Cassandra!
I can't imagine he ate it—he'd be a different kind of person and a different kind of magician if he had—but then, what, it's kicking around in a safe somewhere? Inquiring minds want to know!
Exactly! I think we can assume the one thing that didn't happen is Gabriel eating it; as you say, he wouldn't have, and he would have a very different power set if he had - so where IS it? I could see him keeping it around for bribery/blackmail if necessary, or trading it to someone else for a major favor, but it is really odd that we never find out what he did with it.
Incidentally, as far as unresolved loose ends involving Gabriel, I really thought his cousin "Apple" was going to be somehow important (other than a passing mention of someone who might be able to get him out of a tight spot) - but no, she's only in that one scene at the party and then you never hear about her again.
And having no idea of the loyalty he will inspire in Max thereby, or at least the cautious tolerance that eventually develops into loyalty and saves both of their lives. Interpersonally, Gabriel is an amazing combination of chessmaster and clueless.
HE IS. I love him. And I think one of the things that makes me love Gabriel and Max so much is that element of saving each other. Gabriel saves Max (if not for purely altruistic reasons - but he also looks at him as a person, which apparently no one has done in fifteen years) ... and then Max saves him in return. And then together they save the city, or at least part of it. It's wonderful.
Every now and then the narrative glances off the iceberg of really well organized trauma that seems to comprise a not insubstantial percentage of Gabriel Argent and of necessity it doesn't get as much time in the books so far as Daniel's emotional issues, but I still appreciate when it happens. He's like eight different coping mechanisms with no hobbies in a good suit.
WELL ORGANIZED TRAUMA. That's the best description of Gabriel's (many and varied) issues.
And he's right that he's a terrible delegator and probably exaggerating only slightly that the entire kingdom will collapse into civil war or just a haunted wasteland if he takes a vacation, but also someone really needs to make him take a vacation and by someone I mean Max.
Okay, Gabriel and Max Take a Vacation is definitely going on the to-write list.
I'm pretty sure his moral decency is the limit of his patience for things being done wrong. I love his speech to Mulholland right before assassinating him, however nervous and pompous: "There is the idea of running things for no other reason than things need to be run." God-kings may get in the habit of exercising power for power's sake, big whoop. Cities still need stable infrastructure and people need not to have their electricity turned off for no reason at all. He's not wrong.
Yes!! I love that little speech too. I also love the passing mention in Pacific Fire that he's been trying to talk the other Powers That Be of the city into making it a republic, which obviously isn't something he's ever going to achieve through diplomacy with this group of people - but he seems to be the one person in these books who believes that government can actually be anything other than dystopian and awful. And then he goes and forces his corner of it to conform to his standards. Things might still be pretty bad, but no one is going to have their water or electricity turned off just to make a point on Gabriel's watch.
Has anyone done decent fanart for these books that you've seen?
NO. It's awful and needs to be remedied immediately. There is some nice official art at Tor.com of the heist gang, but there is absolutely nothing for Gabriel and Max anywhere that I can find.
For some reason I imagine these characters in a somewhat anime-like style, especially Gabriel and Max. My mental Gabriel is a bit like Tatsumi from Yami no Matsuei. Not entirely, but I have weirdly clear mental pictures for both of them, and they're very much in an anime style.
....I now have the urge to draw that.
no subject
Please draw that.
(I will respond to the rest of this comment, but this part was important.)
no subject
no subject
Should still like to see your take.
(Hakkai was instantly my favorite of the Sanzo-ikkou, look surprised.)
no subject
Thank you! I just want to find out what is on the other side of the cliffhanger with the dragon. All that ending needed to be any more blockbuster was a mid-credits scene with Gabriel and Max.
Hmm, I have ... questions about Daniel's character design (he looks about 40) but that's a perfect Cassandra!
Agreed on both counts. I'm also not sure how I feel about Moth with a mohawk, but the running gag about the radio is very much in character. (I feel like Moth's sense of humor may have crystallized between the first and second novels, but I'm not complaining at all that it did.)
I could see him keeping it around for bribery/blackmail if necessary, or trading it to someone else for a major favor, but it is really odd that we never find out what he did with it.
It would have made a plausible MacGuffin for a future novel, too, being an osteomantic artifact of staggering power. More than once, Daniel is referred to as the man who ate the Hierarch's heart. Do people even know that he just ate half?
Incidentally, as far as unresolved loose ends involving Gabriel, I really thought his cousin "Apple" was going to be somehow important (other than a passing mention of someone who might be able to get him out of a tight spot) - but no, she's only in that one scene at the party and then you never hear about her again.
Also a good point! Gabriel has an entire family, albeit mostly at the cousin level—much is made in California Bones of the extended aristocracy-cum-larder of the Hierarch's assorted descendants and it's not like he suddenly lost all of those connections when he ascended to the Department of Water and Power. There's so much emphasis on family in these books, it would not have been off-theme for some more of Gabriel's to have figured in the plot, even if it just meant that relations were even weirder now that he had actual social clout and magical power and not just a job with a desk and a great-uncle who might one day eat him. (I am convinced that Gabriel slithers out of most social functions by explaining that he can't leave the pump room alone for a minute, whether he actually can or not.)
And then together they save the city, or at least part of it. It's wonderful.
Yes! I love relationships built around mutual rescue and they are a splendid example of it. And it's more nuanced than just Gabriel reminding Max of his personhood or Max serving as Gabriel's external conscience, although both of these functions are of course huge. They really seem to fill in for one another in a bunch of unspoken ways. They may be the people who keep one another human.
Okay, Gabriel and Max Take a Vacation is definitely going on the to-write list.
Yaaaaaaay.
I also love the passing mention in Pacific Fire that he's been trying to talk the other Powers That Be of the city into making it a republic, which obviously isn't something he's ever going to achieve through diplomacy with this group of people - but he seems to be the one person in these books who believes that government can actually be anything other than dystopian and awful.
I saw that! I agree that his chances of making it work in the current generation are nil without drastic and probably unsustainable measures, but I love that he's not just thinking about it, but floating the idea regardless of its chances. He would have an easier time of his job if he cared less about his government not being awful, but then I wouldn't be so interested in him.
There is some nice official art at Tor.com of the heist gang, but there is absolutely nothing for Gabriel and Max anywhere that I can find.
That is very cool heist gang art and what a terrible omission.