Trickster Noir

(I got ahold of a pre-release copy of Trickster Noir that I used to create this review.)

There was a TV show called Mannix that I used to watch long ago. The hero was a private eye. It seemed like every week he'd get in a scrape, there'd be a lot of tough-guy action, and as often as not someone would put lead in him.

But he would tough it out and solve the crime or whatever. Then he would retire to his sickbed to recover in time for next week's adventure.

If you haven't read Pixie Noir, I will try not to spoil it more than to say the hero doesn't die at the end, but he does get hurt.

Unlike Joe Mannix, Lom, the pixie bounty hunter, doesn't get all better before the next episode starts. That episode is Trickster Noir.

There's some cleaning up to do of messes left over from Pixie Noir. First, there's a nest of ogres who need to get hunted down. Happily, there's a friendly bigfoot who doesn't want the attention the ogres are attracting. And then there's Bella's friends and family who are pretty good with guns and bomb-making. The ogres don't stand a chance.

That gives Lom time to heal before getting on with the main business of the novel. If you know anything about American Indian lore, you may have heard of the Raven spirit. Seems he's got a problem and can't or won't go to Siberia to solve it himself.

And the Fairy court has a similar mission in Japan. Lom and Bella figure they can kill two birds with one stone if they combine both missions.

Of course, they need a decent cover story to explain to all the gossips why they're heading to the other side of the world. And they oblige by providing not one, but two weddings.

Ms. Sanderson may be a bit too anxious to depict the chastity of her protagonists. And a bit too elaborate in the wedding planning. Maybe this is because I'm male and leave wedding planning to the fairer sex. I appreciate the fact that Bella and Lom wait until their union has been solemnized in a manner appropriate to their respective cultures before they consummate their relationship.

One of the things I intimated, but did not state overtly here is that I think sexual congress belongs within the context of monogamous marriage. Stories that show 007 jumping from bed to bed should also show his inability to make a permanent connection with anyone. I believe it is untrue to depict sexual promiscuity seamlessly settling into happily ever after without significant negative consequences.

But that's just my opinion and I've no desire to make you feel bad if you do not share it.

Ms. Sanderson does not preach at this point, but she does belabor the good example of Lom and Bella enough to notice. And when folks notice they get the idea you might be preaching.

There's been a recent flap wherein Social Justice Warriors have insisted that story be sacrificed on the altar of The Message. They insist that you have just the right number of transgendered third-world bohemian have-nots depicted in a caring and sympathetic fashion. Frankly, this is a demand that writing become preaching.

Preaching is just as annoying when it is anti-Christian as when it is pro-Christian. If you absolutely must put a Message into your writing. Then encode it in the first letters of each sentence where it won't club the reader over the head with the subtlety of an Eskimo dispatching a baby seal.

Happily, you'll find no such clubbing in Trickster Noir. It is as much fun as Pixie Noir. A lot of questions about Ms. Sanderson's world-building are nicely answered. And as many backstory questions are left unanswered. What exactly did Lom do to get on the wrong side of the law? And what unhappy fate befell his first wife? I guess we'll just have to wait until Ms. Sanderson's next "Noir" novel.

Five stars.

Pixie Noir

In the late 1970s, an animated movie named Wizards came out. I don't remember anything about the movie except a scene toward the end where one wizard confronts another wizard. And you might expect a big fight with magic being thrown back and forth. Instead, one wizard pulls out a revolver and puts daylight through his opponent. Gunplay in a magical fantasy story was a brand new thing and it had shock value. The scene was as surprising as later when Indiana Jones aborts a sword fight with a big scimitar wielding dude using his sidearm.

In the decades that have followed, this sort of blending of firearms and magic has become a little more common. Larry Correia does a great job of describing with loving detail the firearms used to dispatch evil in his Monster Hunter stories.

In Larry Correia's world you might not take down a werewolf with a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, but you'll slow him down enough to drop a desk on him. And Larry Correia doubled-down with his magical private eye in his Warbound stories wherein John Moses Browning supplies the firearms.

The mix of fantasy and noir goes well together and Cedar Sanderson adds a twist in her mystical bounty hunter, Lom. Whereas Larry Correia builds his stories around big dudes--a towering "combat accountant" and a magical "heavy"--Lom is a pixie.

As in shorter of stature and slight of build.

When I say a story is about a bounty hunter, one doesn't immediately think of a pixie. Which is cool.

But all the other things you would expect of a noir protagonist are present. He's got a past. He's been betrayed by those close to him and thus he doesn't trust anyone.

That includes the dame in trouble with great gams. He meets Bella in the opening scene of Pixie Noir. Like a good noir story, the dame is more than a pretty face and smoking hot body.

Trouble takes the form of various magical monsters who want her dead. Lom's inner demons and his unhappy past add to his internal conflict. They run a gauntlet of evil monsters as Lom tries to deliver Bella to his client. Along the way they use guns, lots of guns.

Lom and Bella undergo some changes on their road trip and the nature of the relationship becomes more complicated as well.

It's a fun read and I recommend it heartily. Five stars.

BUT FIRST a word from our Grammar Nazi. (What good noir story doesn't have Nazis?)

English Grammar does not use grammatical cases as much as other languages. When I learned English grammar in school, I cheated. My mom spoke grammatically correct sentences, and thus I never learned English Grammar, I just gave the answer that "sounded good." There were exceptions. Nobody says "whom" any more, so any usage with "whom" did not sound right. Thus it was only in the last few years that I learned that "who" is used in a subjective case, and "whom" is used in an objective case.

Moreover collections of names and pronouns like "Joe and I went to breakfast" combine names and pronouns with the case of the pronoun depending upon the usage of the collection. If the collection is used in a subjective way, you say "Joe and I" and if it is an objective use, you say, "Joe and me."

Thus we say, "Joe and I went to breakfast. The waitress brought toast to Joe and me." It is a common mistake to use the subjective pronoun in a collection when one ought to use the objective pronoun. Objects of a prepositional phrase are invariably subjective case. Ms. Sanderson needs to hire an editor to catch these things in her final draft.

For this reason, the Grammar Nazi insists that I deduct a half-star from Pixie Noir: four point five stars.