Sharp Words

8 out of 10

This is a novel I felt a bit odd about reading, because it’s written by someone I have actually met – and I mean on a personal level, not the sort of ‘meeting’ that I’ve managed when getting Neil Gaiman to sign books, for example. No, T A Moore and I hung out at NaNoWriMo meetings in Belfast a few years ago (in fact, she was instrumental in getting us a location that year), and I was both hideously jealous and insanely pleased when I found out this year that she’d actually been published. Plus, she knows I’m doing this review, which always adds extra spice, sort of, to reading a novel.

Anyway, The Even is her first published novel, and though it’s pretty short, it could never be called sweet. It’s a tale of mystery and treachery and timeless feuds between gods and demons and fantastic creatures, set in the eponymous city of the Even. This is a place with very dark undercurrents indeed, ruled (more or less) by the demon Yekum. He has a countless number of offspring, all cursed never to touch the ground.

The protagonist is Faceless Lenith, an Etruscan death goddess who got bored of hanging around in the world of the dead. (Really. She has no face, just blank skin. It’s creepy.) She’s willing to visit her old home though, to pay off a (very large) gambling debt by ‘rescuing’ one of the Yekumi who was condemned as a traitor and stripped of his name and his wings.

The identity of who has hired Lenith is a mystery, and she is initially more interested in getting her debt paid off than finding out who wants the Yekumi rescued. However, after Lenith has overcome various obstacles to find the Yekumi and bring him back to the Even, her troubles are definitely not over as she finds herself embroiled in a plot that could destroy the city.

The story and the characters in The Even aren’t what I would class as especially complex, although they are definitely interesting, and sometimes a simple story is the most effective. Instead, it was the city itself, and the imagination that T A Moore has poured into it, that captured my attention. Etruscan and Carthaginian goddesses rub shoulders with Celtic monsters, human folk heroes and Biblical demons, in a city that shifts its walls and streets but has boundaries that most of its inhabitants cannot cross. It’s a city full of ‘human’ behaviour even if the majority of its denizens certainly aren’t human. Food (anyone for dog?), gambling, sex, religion, and the trappings and pitfalls of power are all thrown into the mix and described with dark and disturbing imagery that reminded me of a less viscerally gruesome version of Edward Lee’s hell (City Infernal).

What really made me pleased about this novel, and made it pretty unique, was its use of illustrations to support the text. Stephanie Law has brought the Even and its denizens to life in vivid line drawings which fit well with the story and help bring the city to life.

Sadly though, for me anyway, the novel was let down by some sloppy editing. There were a number of spelling mistakes in the text, mostly the type where one word is used instead of another which is similarly-spelt… and me being me, these caused hiccups in my reading. It’s a shame, because I like Morrigan Books (the publishers) a lot – they have some really interesting material and authors, and a great free-zine, Three Crow Press.

But these are small errors and wouldn’t spoil an ordinary reader’s enjoyment (an ordinary reader being someone who isn’t as hung up on nit-picky errors as I am). If you like mild horror, shown through the story’s imagery rather than through events, and/or vivid fantasy, then this is an entertaining read and a fascinating world. And according to the back of the book, Tammy’s writing another novel set in the Even – I look forward to it!