Books: Feeder By Patrick Weekes (2018)

“Lori Fisher hunts monsters. Not with a sword or a gun, but with an interdimensional creature called Handler. Together they take down “feeders”—aliens who prey on mankind. When Lori touches a feeder, Handler’s impossibly large jaws appear and drag the beast into another dimension. It’s a living—or was, until a job for the Lake Foundation goes wrong, and Lori stumbles across the Nix, a group of mutant teenagers held captive on the docks. Now the Lake Foundation is hunting Lori, and if they find Lori, they find Ben, the brother Lori would do anything to protect. There’s only one thing to do: strike first. Lori teams up with the Nix to take on Lake, and to discover why the Nix were kidnapped in the first place. But as she watches their powers unfold, Lori realizes the Nix are nothing like her. She has no powers. She has…Handler. Maybe she’s not the monster hunter after all. Maybe she’s just the bait.”

Ultimately, Feeder is a book that forces the reader to go with the flow of the narrative –the pacing starts out fast and continues throughout (a bit on that later). Weekes, oddly for this genre, spends little time explaining anything, leaving what world building there is to brief comments and random happenings. As an example, the world’s water levels have risen, leaving some cities using boats instead of cars, and no real explanation is ever given as to why this happened (global warming or aliens or something Weekes has chosen to slowly reveal over subsequent books?) and there seems to be some sort of collective brain washing that prevents people from really examining why this has happened. This can be an odd choice to foist on a reader, and might be frustrating for those who love epic world building (this book is less than 300 pages), but it does not take too much away from the fun.

It’s also clear that Patrick Weekes took the criticism he got from Rogues of the Republic fantasy trilogy –one filled with a variety of inclusive characters generally not seen in that genre- and doubled down them for Feeder. But this also causes a small part of the problem that the book does have –the narrative takes place over just five days, and there seems to be a rush to get these Nix folks and Lori paired off. Seems hollow and unrealistic (yes this is a science fiction novel, but like everything, the tales needs to run on some internal logic, or it all falls apart). So while the book is well paced, as I noted, we get little or no room for these romantic relationships to happen organically.

Also, the world building could’ve been tightened up. I’m unsure if that would effected Weekes choice to keep the pacing going (some authors get distracted by world building), but if this is going to be a start of new series, maybe he felt he did not need to reveal so much? But it was distracting at times, because I was continually pulled out of the narrative when characters said things that should’ve be elaborated on, but wasn’t. So my mind kept asking: where do the Feeders come from and why there some sort of collective amnesia effecting people about the worlds water rising?

Books: The Paladin Caper (Rogues of the Republic #3) by Patrick Weekes (2015)

“Loch and her crew are determined to stop the ancients from returning to reclaim the world they once ruled, but a kidnapped friend throws their plans awry. When a desperate rescue turns into a shocking reunion, the ancients return and seize power. Determined to stop them, Loch and the crew look for a way to close the gate to the ancients’ world, but this time, they find themselves up against an enemy that has insinuated itself into the highest ranks of the Republic. Cruel, cunning, and connected, the ancients target the crew’s families and histories, threatening to tear friendships apart.If that weren’t bad enough, Loch must deal with her treacherous assassin sister, her turncoat ancient friend, and a daemon who has sworn to hunt her to the ends of the earth. In order to save the Republic and pull off her largest con ever, Loch will need her friends…and maybe her enemies too.”

In what could be (though I doubt) the final book in this series, author Patrick Weekes saves the best for last. Even though the book has a tendency to bounce around like ADD kid locked in a sugar factory, the story and the characters evolve. Of course, after three books, I might have finally just used to his style of writing. Still, I enjoyed the books, with its daring Indiana Jones adventures and snarky, sometimes self-aware heroes who are as flawed as much as they’re awful damn lucky and clever.

The overall arc of the series was well thought out –nothing seemed really out of place here. He dropped just enough hints and ideas that enabled the set pieces to flow without stopping the narrative to from falling into long, bloated info-dumping explanations.  

Once again I must note the diverse cast of characters Weekes has created here, something not seen in fantasy. And like the science fiction genre where modern problems are used in future settings, Weekes weaves a subtle commentary on racism. Also refreshing is the mutual respect of sexual relationships with the various characters. There is no slut shaming as well as no one batting an eye at any of the pairings, including the same sex ones. 

Even though I’ve grown to have a love/hate relationship with series novels, I do hope Weekes plans to continue writing about these characters. They’re fun to be around and this rag-tag group of thieves, former killers, and hooligans appear to be more interesting than anything Robert Jordan ever created.  

Books: The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic #2) By Patrick Weekes (2014)

“Who would have thought a book of naughty poems by elves could mean the difference between war and peace? But if stealing the precious volume will keep the Republic and the Empire from tearing out each other's throats, rogue soldier Isafesira de Lochenville - "Loch" to friends and foes alike - is willing to do the dishonest honors. With her motley crew of magic-makers, law-breakers, and a talking warhammer, she'll match wits and weapons with dutiful dwarves, mercenary knights, golems, daemons, an arrogant elf, and a sorcerous princess. But getting their hands on the prize - while keeping their heads attached to their necks - means Loch and company must battle their way from a booby-trapped museum to a monster-infested library, and from a temple full of furious monks to a speeding train besieged by assassins. And for what? Are a few pages of bawdy verse worth waging war over? Or does something far more sinister lurk between the lines?”

While I favored the first book in this series, The Palace Job, I do think The Prophecy Con does come out a better book. Perhaps, as with most books in this genre of late, the writer spends so much time world building that the plot, the characters motivations, and growth take a backseat to all the detailed explanations. With the second book, the writer is freer to explore the world they create, but also give us a better look into the main characters. However, while the heroes here are refreshingly diverse, most of the dialogue is in the form of quips and one-liners. What helps, though, is that the characters also have depth that can catch you by surprise, even the villains seem less two-dimensional. Yet there are times I began to wonder how unbelievably clever Loch and fellow team members seemed and there was a lot of times the book lived too closely to the corner of convenience and coincidence. And Weekes creates these fantastic set pieces –though the whole last act involving a card game is laborious. I mean it’s hard to present these scenes in novels, which is why to certain extent they're better suited for the TV or movie screen- but seems unable to stop himself from figuring out a clever, even logical way out of the situations –it’s again, mostly handled with jokes. 

So the books sheer number of things happening at the same time, the shifting point of view, is a bit of distraction. Yet, even as I say this, I still found the book workable as hybrid fantasy novel that also blends some high technology (I wouldn’t call it steampunk per se, but it does have elements of it) within it. The characters are fun, the jokes work (most of the time), and the pages are highly turn-able. It offers, as I noted, a boat load of diverse characters which makes this series not designed for readers of fantasy where everyone is white, male, and straight. 

Again, it’s clear that Weekes agenda is to offer something new within the well worn path that is fantasy.  It’s worthy of read, mostly because it does not offer the same story we’ve seen before, and it’s light, but can be deep as well. To pull that off means something to me.

Books: The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic, Book One) By Patrick Weekes (2012)

Much of what I like about The Palace Job, the debut novel by Patrick Weekes, who is known for his work on the Mass Effect video game series, is that while it carries the DNA of the fantasy genre, it adds something I’ve not seen since David Eddings The Belgariad and The Malloreon series, humor.

While Piers Anthony did the same with his long-running Xanth series, it devolved into bad puns and a formulaic structure that made me eventually give up the series around the tenth book (which has ballooned into forty novels as of October of 2016). Even Terry Brooks Shannara series had some humor, but it was the success of the drama filled and very serious Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson and the launch of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series made sure that the humorous fantasy was going to take back seat. Since then we’ve seen many epic fantasy novels from next generation of writers like Brandon Sanderson (who while successful in his early days, won the lottery when he was assigned to finish Jordan’s overlong and very bloated series after that writer passed away in 2007) and George R. R. Martin’s (who had been around for a while, I admit) Song of Ice and Fire series. 

I’ve whined for a while that I’ve yet to find a fantasy novel, or series, in my more mature state of mind of my 50s that takes me back to the halcyon days of my late teens and early twenties when writers like Eddings, Brooks, Anthony, Tad Williams where producing fantasy series, while wholly indebted to J.R. Tolken, were still fun. Listen, I have no problem with serious fantasy, but my issue with today’s writers comes from that fact that most of these books are overlong, are sometimes paralyzingly tedious and often got me thinking that publisher needs to get a stronger editor for the writer or anyone else who can help tone down these writers rhetoric and force them to get to the point of the story. 

While The Palace Job relies on tropes of the genre, Weekes takes a page from science fiction, and adds a bit modern day social and political issues to make this first book in a series more easily identifiable. So what we get is an Ocean’s Eleven (as its been described), blended with some original ideas along with a great dose of humor and tongue placed well within cheek that pokes fun at the genre as well. 

“Loch used to be a soldier but is now serving a prison sentence on the underside of the floating city of Heaven’s Spire, cleaning the crystals that keep it suspended. It’s a dangerous task and the prisoners are not meant to survive it for long, but Loch and her former attendant Kail manage to escape, driven by Loch’s single-minded goal of retrieving a priceless manuscript that will insure them a more than comfortable future.  To this end they enlist the help of the most ragtag crew ever imagined: a shape-shifting unicorn and a virgin -bumbling teenager named Dairy; a failed mage with a penchant for illusions; a skilled lock-picker and her gravity-defying companion, and a death priestess, who used to be a love priestess, and her talking warhammer.”

The plot gets a bit complicated as it proceeds and there are a ton of twists that I did not see (though there just as many as I did), but what works for me (again) is that the world Weekes creates is very different from others –it’s some combination of standard fantasy ideas with steampunck tropes thrown in for good measure. And Weekes does not go out of his way to explain how this sort of higher technology that depends on magic actually works, which (for some reason) I found very charming.

Then there is modern politics, class, and racial issues that populate the tale. And while the agenda of Weekes is evident, he does not hit you over the head with his metaphors, though I suspect many of the anti- SJW groups will hate the idea that the hero is female and black.

And while Silestin is really a James Bond villain out to destroy the land for his own profit, in post-2016 elections, he can easily be Donald Trump. His speechifying, his plans, his dark agenda, and backstabbing mirrors a lot of what is currently coming from the president-elects mouth and Washington.

In the end, this is a series I know I will continue.  Now I just have to order them.