Brooklyn Knight

by | May 8, 2011 | Reviews | 0 comments

It seems more and more to me that urban fantasy is the big thing right now. You can’t throw a stick in a bookstore, provided you can still find an honest to goodness bookstore, without hitting a book about a wizard, witch, she-vamp, or some other supernatural-tinged hero in the modern day going up against foes usually found in sword and sorcery stories. Since such beasties like demons, vampires, ghosts and other night-spawned horrors work both sides of the horror/fantasy fence such books often find a comfy home on the shelves of horrorheads everywhere. That said, few urban fantasy authors have the horror bona fides as C.J. Henderson. He made his bones writing terror tales with a Lovecraft bent for years, but does his Lovecraftian horror sensibilities blend well with the modern magic genre?

The short answer is yes and here’s the important part; he’s already been doing stories like this for years. You see before reading this book I heard a bunch of people comparing it to the DRESDEN FILES novels of Jim Butcher, but Henderson had a tough as nails PI named Teddy London going up against the monsters of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos years before the first Dresden book ever saw print. Now that really has no bearing on this book, but it does show that Henderson has been writing these kind of stories for a good long time and that he’s not just a Johnny Come Lately as some, less informed reviewers, have suggested. I just wanted to set the record straight.

Ok, on with the review.

BROOKLYN NIGHT is about Piers Knight, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum who is a modern-day Indiana Jones (I usually hate such comparisons, but it is the one the book’s back cover uses) who hunts down mystical artifacts less they fall into the wrong hands. One night a group of astral-projected thieves beak into the museum trying to steal the mysterious “Dream Stone”. Luckily for the rest of the world, since the Dream Stone has untold power, Mr. Knight is more than capable to keep the artifact safe using both his academic knowledge and the use of arcane magic he has gleaned over the years. That’s right, Piers can chuck spells with the best of them and he’s going to need all the edges he can to solve the mystery of who, or what, wants the stone and for what nefarious purpose.

This is a first book in a planned series and as such it’s a pretty good start. There are some rough parts, to be sure. Some of the New York-isms are applied a bit too thickly and broadly and just don’t ring true. Also, Mr. Henderson is perhaps a bit in love with his new creation as Piers Knight seems just a tad too perfect and over qualified for the job. But these things are mostly minor and can be addressed or mellowed in future books. What matters with books like this are the supernatural elements, the occasional bit of humor, and the action and CJ Henderson is a master at writing all three and that shows here, but that is especially true for the action scenes and how they build up the tension. The phrase “page turner” is often overused, but it would be an appropriate slice of hyperbole here. While reading this novel I always wanted to know what was going to happen next and when it was all over I wanted more. If that’s not the mark of a good book, I don’t know what is.

About Brian Sammons