Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold

Dead Man in a Ditch, the second book in Arnold’s Fetch Phillips Archives, takes much longer to get going than the first. Fetch takes on regular detective cases one after another that he solves pretty fast, if not always accurately or the way the client assumes. It isn’t until well past half-point that a plot begins to emerge, which ties in the first half of the book little by little. The story picks up pace towards the end, and with a few twists the book becomes unputdownable.

To his bewilderment, Fetch has gained a reputation in Sunder City as someone who is looking for the lost magic. As the person responsible for its loss, he knows that it can’t be revived and to believe otherwise gives people only false and dangerous hope. Yet he comes across events and items that seem to argue otherwise. There might still be magic in the world. Then he stumbles on a plot involving Sunder City and the well-being of its citizens and he realises that there are things more important to fight for than the past and the lost magic, even if it means going against those he loves.

Fetch is slightly less hopeless and a bit more determined man in this book. He spends less time drunk and more time doing impossible things. But he still suffers from the guilt of what he’s done, and he still yearns to be accepted by those he loves and respects, which causes him to do things he later regrets.

The narrative is more focused in the present than in the first book. I missed the flashbacks into Fetch’s past, but the few there were deepened the plot. The language isn’t quite as descriptive and rich than in the first book, and there are fewer insights into human condition, but it’s still a pleasure to read. The book is a little too long, but that’s all forgotten once the endgame starts. All in all, a good follow-up for an excellent debut.

I received a review copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

The Last Smile in Sunder City, The Fetch Phillips Archives 1, by Luke Arnold is marketed as Peter Grant meets Discworld, and whoever came up with that is doing the book a great disfavour. Yes, there’s a private detective in a world full of fantastical creatures, but that’s the only thing they have in common. I wouldn’t necessarily even call it urban fantasy, despite it mostly taking place in a large city. Post-apocalyptic fantasy or grimdark might fit the bill better. Perhaps for the fans of Daniel Polansky’s Low Town series, or Robert Jackson Bennet’s The Divine Cities trilogy.

The book is set in a unique fantasy world populated by every possible magical and fantastical creature the fantasy genre has ever come up with. Unfortunately for them, there has been a war with humans six years earlier that has wiped away all magic from the world, breaking it irrevocably and rendering the magical creatures and the very nature husks of what they used to be. The change is so recent that the people are only now starting to build their lives again, with some clinging to what they’ve lost and all blaming the humans. There is some technology, like phones and cars—though both have been adapted to operate without magic—but mostly it feels like a pre-technology world.

At the heart of the story is Fetch Phillips, a man for hire who is feeling permanently sorry for himself for his role in the loss of magic. At first I thought he was merely taking a general blame of a former soldier, but it turns out he actually is to blame. So he spends most of his time drunk. He’s hired to find a vampire who by all accounts is a model citizen and adapted to his new life without magic and with a certainty of an imminent death. The case takes Fetch all around the city and gets his arse kicked more often than he should’ve been able to recover from, and in the end turns out to be more than he imagined it would be. As he investigates, he takes a stock of his life so far and how he became the destroyer of magic.

I found the backstories infinitely more interesting than the investigation, which was done in a rather haphazard fashion. They were insightful and told a lot about Fetch and the human condition. They are also what make the book more a fantasy, or even epic fantasy, than urban fantasy. The rich world-building and the story of its fall are not what urban fantasy is usually about. The book also lacks the humour and the optimism of most urban fantasy that I’ve read. It’s cynical and dark, and to the very end rather hopeless. The book even argues for the danger of hope in making a beast of a man who would otherwise be content with his lot.

This was an excellent book, even if it was a somewhat heavy reading at times. The language is rich and interesting, and Fetch is a complex man who has a long way to redemption, if that is ever even possible for him. The side characters are all more or less bastards, with a couple of exceptions whom I hope will become series stables. I have the next book already lined up and I have high hopes for it.