Liz Williams “Snake
Agent” (Open Road Media, 2013)
Do you ever feel like you’re just tired of stories where the
protagonist goes to Hell to fulfill some quest?
It seems that in the last 10 years or so it’s gone from being a daring
exercise in storytelling to a tired and worn trope, ready for retirement. Doesn’t every urban fantasy series have a story
arch involving a lengthy stay? How many
times will Sam and/or Dean get “trapped” there?
Why doesn’t some enterprising young demon set up a small business
subletting apartments there – there should be plenty of demand.
With my burnout in mind, I was shocked at how much I enjoyed
Liz Williams’ Snake Agent. Williams’ Chinese future gleefully ignores
the Western tropes that I have grown so tired of. We’re told a buddy cop story, where one cop
is human and the other is a demon. They’re
working together to investigate a vast conspiracy that will bring harm to large
numbers of humans as well as destabilize the complex hierarchies of Hell.
Williams’ Hell, like the rest of the universe of the
Detective Inspector Chen Novels (this is the first book), flows organically
from its setting. This is not a vaguely
Chinese city placed into a Western metaphysical construct. Here all beings, god, demon or human, are on
the wheel, and have more in common than in difference. Gods and demons are not fundamentally others. They have the same sort of basic drives and
needs. Hell is a bureaucratic mess. There are ministries and functionaries
competing for prestige and status. Even
the geography is a mirror of sorts to the Earthly realm. Naturally enough, for a fundamentally
polytheistic culture, there are mentions of exotic Western corollaries to what
we actually see.
Snake Agent is
one of the most original urban fantasy novels that I have read in a long
time. I’d highly recommend it for anyone
interested in reading something a bit off the beaten track.
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