Black Bottle Man

Rembrandt is ten years old when his life is turned upside-down.

It’s 1928, and the Great Depression has yet to begin. Rembrandt’s entire world is his extended family, three households of farmers who live very close to each other, as farm houses go. He’s the only child in three families, and his aunts both want a child very badly.

So badly, in fact, that they’ll cut a deal with the Devil to get what they want.

To save his aunts’ souls, Rembrandt, his pa, and his uncle Thompson have to take to the road, never staying in any one place longer than twelve days. Because on the thirteenth day, the Black Bottle Man will come for them…

* * *

This one took me by surprise; it built so steadily, and so quietly, skipping from Rembrandt’s youth to his 90-year-old dotage, that I didn’t realize until the end just how much I had invested in it. The climax caught me off guard with just how much emotion it wrung from me. Not many books have made me tear up. This one didn’t, either, but man it was a near thing.

My only complaint would be that I found a few grammatical quibbles, here and there, but on the whole this book is highly recommended.

Written by Craig Russell, based on his radio play of the same name, Black Bottle Man is published by Great Plains Teen Fiction, an imprint of Great Plains Publications. My copy is signed because I went to the book launch at Pennywise Books here in Brandon.

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This novel arrived in the mail about a day before I headed west, after I’d waited the better part of two weeks for it (and even longer, if you factor in the fact that I pre-ordered it, but that’s a whole ‘nother story, as they say).

I started reading it on the train, and I finished it in the basement living room of my sister-in-law’s house. It’s an engrossing read; as I neared the end, I had to force myself to slow down, to not miss any of the fantastic* details hidden in very nearly every single sentence.

The novel’s set in the same industrial-faerie universe as The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, but it’s by no means a sequel. The story starts off with Will le Fey watching war dragons arc across the sky over his small village, bound for conflict in some unimaginable war. One is shot down, and drags itself, flightless, to Will’s village, where it declares itself ruler. It makes Will its lieutenant, in part because Will, unlike anyone else in town, is half-human.

Will partakes in the privileges and the awful responsibilities of his role, and in short order the entire village is set against him. When the dragon’s grip on the village is finally broken, Will is sent into exile.

He makes his way across a Faërie beset by the ravages of war, and winds up in a refugee camp. From there he travels to Babel itself, the great tower that stands high as Heaven, and joins in a confidence game that trades on the identity of the absentee King of Babel to make a lot of money. But there’s a twist; there’s always a twist…

This book is dense with information, and every sentence serves to nudge the plot forward. There’s a depth and a humanity to the characters, and we see people at their best and at their very worst, sometimes on the same page. Nothing is irrelevant; every detail has its place and its purpose. The world of Babel is rife with betrayals, disappointments, triumphs, and tragedies.

Michael Swanwick very much needs to be more well-known than he is. It’s a shame that hardly anyone will have heard of this book, much less read it.

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* In every sense of the word.

If you haven’t read Bone yet, you really should.

I won’t say any more*, because I should be writing my own zombie-lawyer epic, but here are passel of reviews.

* Except this: I didn’t want it to end. As I approached page 1200**, I found myself torn: I couldn’t wait to turn the page and see just how everyone was going to get out of this jam, but I wanted to pace myself, because I didn’t want to get to the ending. No matter how good an ending it was (and I feel it was just about perfect), it would still be The End. I wanted to stay with all of them—the Bone cousins, Thorn, Gran’ma Ben, the red dragon, even the stupid, stupid rat creatures—just a little longer.

It’s been almost forever since I read a book that made me feel that way.

** Yes. It’s a comic. Yes. It’s clear of 1300 pages long.

Lamb, a novel by Christopher Moore.

The subtitle on this one is “The Gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal”, so right off you should know if you’re the type that will enjoy this story, or the kind that maybe shouldn’t pick it up. Me, I’m the type that would enjoy this story.

Having read Moore’s novel Coyote Blue years ago, I knew that he was funny. Apparently I’d forgotten how funny. I chortled all the way through this book (well, till I got to the last section, titled “The Passion”).

The story is largely concerned with the “missing years” of Christ’s life. Biff (whose real name is Levi bar Alphaeus) and Christ (whose real name is Joshua bar Joseph) grow up together, fall in love with the same girl (Mary the Magdalene, referred to here as “Maggie”), and have all kinds of adventures and misadventures together. When events conspire to put Maggie beyond their reach forever, Joshua and Biff saddle up and head off to the East, looking for the Wise Men that had showed up on the night of Josh’s birth.

They track down Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar, traipsing from Israel to Afghanistan, China, and India in the process, learning kung fu, Zen Buddhism, and Hindu asceticism along the way. (Well, Josh learns; Biff is more into the ladies, and he learns quite a few items from them, mostly related to the Kama Sutra.)

The story is packed with laughs, both overt and sly (at one point, Biff says to Josh, as they travel toward Damascus, “Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Damascus road, Josh. That sort of thing doesn’t happen.”

As good as he is at telling the funny stuff, Moore doesn’t flinch when he tells the sad stories; the grim and gruesome parts of the tale are equally well-told. The Passion and the Crucifixion are especially heart-rending when told in the voice of a man forced to watch his closest friend die.

When I came to the epilogue, I found myself wishing there was more, much more. I think I’ll have to get some more Christopher Moore novels into my house.