The original prospector had extensively surveyed it. The stroid was primarily metal ore. It was a big one: about three by three by ten kilometers in size, roughly barbell-shaped. Its albedo was high — typical for nickel-iron rocks. Its mean density had been 5.8 grams per cubic centimeter — nearly three times Phocaea’s. One end of the barbell consisted of a big lump of crumbly silicates; the result of a collision with a silica rock sometime in the distant past. But the bulk of the stroid was high-grade ore.

Thankfully, this is an extreme example, but the prose does tend to bog down a little when Locke wants to make sure the reader knows how well researched the novel is. The pacing of some of the “action” sequences also suffers from a little more laborious blocking than is strictly necessary. The resolution of some of the plot elements leans on coincidence almost to the point of deus ex machina and one dangling plot thread clearly leads to a potential sequel. The cast of of characters is large and some of the names invite confusion (Ian/Ivan; Harbough/Harman/Harper); I had a little trouble keeping all the relationships and roles straight.
Despite these minor quibbles, I definitely enjoyed Up Against It.

needs more demons? not really.

• His prose juxtaposes lyrical, even pastoral imagery with the ugliness of urban decay. The book is full of description like, “There was a moon low in the sky, like an albino’s eyelash. What light there was came from the stars, or the ineffectual blocks of orange in the pub windows,” and “A layer of slate-colored cloud had slide across the sky. Only the thinnest edge of light trembled above the staggered horizon, like hope receding.”
• Sometimes he approaches the apotheosis of horror with subtlety and occlusion, in phrases that left me sure something grotesque and horrible had happened but not always sure exactly what.
• Then again, sometimes he opts for stomach-wrenching clarity or the well-worn use of metaphor and simile to project characters’ unease onto innocuous settings, like, “the exposed bones of more demolished houses on our dwindling street.”
• Williams’s sense of place is often extraordinary. The protagonist’s search for a mysterious London street in “Nest of Salt” left me feeling almost as if I’d traipsed some of the same blocks. (On the other hand, I found the Venice travelogue of “City in Aspic,” less convincing, as if Williams were laying out his tale with a city map at his side.)
• Williams’ characters, with few exceptions, are either unhappily alone or on the cusp of realizing they’d be less unhappy if they were alone. He’s eerily good at portraying guttering relationships:
  

  Crumbling farmhouses; fields freshly opened by the tractors, the soil dark and dense, brown as wet leather; long gray roads. They turned on to one now, flanked by elm trees, an object lesson in perspective.
  “Now there’s pretty for you, Molly said.
  “There are moves to pull trees like that down,” Ian said, and then mentally kicked himself for once again putting a downer on things. Why couldn’t he just agree occasionally? It was what she wanted to hear.

  (supernatural elements enter only at the end of several of these stories — if at all — as tensions between the characters reach a climax, which heightens my overall impression that Williams is very consciously using literal, physical horror as an externalization of his characters’ internal, emotional horror.

• Scattered through the volume are a handful of supernatural entities or tropes that one might name, or have encountered previously. “You could arguably describe that one as a ‘ghost story,’” one might say, or “the twist of that one was a bit like a certain Twilight Zone episode.” And there’s at least one bona fide “serial killer” within these pages. But even the relatively comfortable, recognizable sources of horror are transmuted in Williams hands. Overall, this is one of the most original and surprising works of dark fantasy I’ve read in some time.

Despite its many strong qualities, I found this a difficult book to finish. Partly it’s the familiar problem of the single-author short story collection: it perhaps over-emphasizes the extent to which an author revisits certain themes or uses certain literary devices.

But the problem here is substantially mine: I prefer my horror to have more likable characters and/or a little more potential for redemption. Not every story in this collection is relentlessly grim, but many are, and I found the cumulative effect oppressive.

For what it’s worth: Williams seems so quintessentially British that I found the (US-based) publisher’s use of American spellings for words like “color” almost distracting.

needs more demons I may have to go with “needs fewer demons” for once.

I also found it less insulting to the reader’s intelligence than many paranormal romance books. Davidson doesn’t really explain why Betsy’s corpse wasn’t embalmed, for instance, but at least the issue is raised within the novel.

Toward the end, the Undead and Unwed takes a turn in the power struggle between rival vampire clans direction, a theme I find tiresome. But, on the bright side, Betsy finds it tiresome too, so maybe, just maybe, it won’t dominate future entries in the franchise.

needs more demons? nah.

This time around, what impressed me most was the density of repurposing elements from other recent media: the (powerful young) zombie settler/Settler’s Affairs back drop is very Buffy the vampire slayer/Watcher’s Council. The pom squad/cheerleader social conflict is straight out of Glee. In the second book I was more conscious of tiresome Twilight-ish romantic mooning (and I suspect if I had ever read a “Sweet Valley High” book I might have found points of comparison there, as well). Last time I thought it was a bit unfair of me to brand people yelling vaguely Latin-ish spells like “Reverto!” as derivative of Harry Potter, but this book adds a distinctly Potter-y element to the evolving plot thread as well.

Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments books draw on much of the same source material, but far more successfully. Undead Much leans very, very hard on tall coincidence, and its conclusion is far too much like that of You’re So Undead to Me — both feature a late revelation of the villain’s identity that abandons character consistency, and a big improbable fight scene.

As an adult male I’m admittedly way outside the target demographic for this novel. But there are a plenty of young adult books I have no trouble enjoying. This was not one of them.

I was also a bit creeped out by Undead Much’s treatment of adolescent sexuality. Megan Berry spends a lot of time wondering whether she should become sexually active or not — but because there’s black magic afoot and the blood of virgins has ritual uses, in her situation her life would literally become less complicated if she started having sex. I hate to sound like an old prude, but that seems like a misleading message to send teens.

needs more demons? yeah.

I learned many things, not least of which is that HBO’s polygamous-Mormon-centered soap Big Love, the third season of which we lately finished watching, isn’t nearly as far-fetched as I might have thought. As a proponent of gay marriage, before reading this book I had thought a good place to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable partnerships might be to allow any combination of adult consenting humans, so a marriage of, say, three women and four men might be fine. But after reading Under the Banner of Heaven I’m forced to conclude that raising children in a polygamous culture — particularly one that prioritizes procreation, devalues external education, and requires unquestioning obedience — creates a situation in which “consent” may be a practical impossibility.

As in the prior novel, Irby seamlessly melds real historical figures like Harvey Firestone, Joe Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, and her third husband Henri de La Falaise into his fast-moving, twist-filled plot. Also as in the previous book, Irby leans hard on coincidence, mostly to establish connections between his upper- and lower-crust characters, but that bugged me less this time. Once again, there’s enough accurate historical detail that the reader could learn a few things without it ever getting intrusive.

One feature I didn’t mention when I wrote about 7,000 Clams is that sometimes there’s an additional level of irony. Some of Irby’s descriptions of 1928 could easily apply to other years up to and including 2009, viz a northern society lady’s first glimpse of a swank hotel:

[She] joylessly trudges through the well-appointed lobby of the Flamingo Hotel located on the bay side of Miami Beach. It is a huge, hulking barn of pink stucco, with a decor that strikes her as relentlessly Florida: pastels, marine life, palm fronds. Everything is bigger than it needs to be, glossy to the pint of smarmy, overbearing in its irrepressible invitations to “have fun” and “relax,” and above all dedicated to the haughty display of wealth. Why wear one necklace when six will do just fine? These sunburned barbarians talk loudly, guffaw like baboons, and careen about like they have been jolted with electricity.

(7,000 Clams similarly featured a brief trip to a Baltimore cop bar that was almost like a scene from The Wire.)

Here’s my most telling reaction to this book: If Irby writes another novel about Hearn, I’ll certainly read it. But I hope he doesn’t — I hope he finds some other improbably charming lowlife to write about instead — because I’d like to think that after the conclusion of The Up and Up Hearn might get to live out the rest of his days without anything especially suspense novel-worthy befalling him.

needs more demons? nossir.

needs more demons? not really.

Amy Haskel’s breezy narrative voice is if anything even more assured, and the novel was more satisfyingly structured. Again the major plot driver took several chapters to emerge, but I was less bothered by that than in the first book. Some of the supporting cast is a little thinly developed, and the who-is-he-again? confusion is exacerbated because many characters are referred to both by their real names and their “Rose & Grave” society nicknames, but the publisher helpfully includes a key at the front of the book. And maybe I would have been less confused if I hadn’t been flipping the pages so gosh-darn fast.

Finally, to borrow one of Peterfreund’s devices — I confess: One of the situations set up in the first book didn’t resolve as I had expected after all.

Needs More Demons? Not this time.