« Do You Ever | Home | To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman »

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

By Shelly | August 13, 2008

Book Synop:

A violent ghost in a world where spirits are rarely mean-spirited is a clue to a deeper mystery in this engrossing dark fantasy debut from comics-writer Carey. Felix Fix Castor is an itinerant exorcist who (like a certain famous group of Hollywood ghost-evictors) alternates between dispatching spooks and doing stage magic at ungrateful children’s birthday parties. When he’s summoned to end a haunting at London’s prestigious Bonnington Archive, he finds a vengeful specter with a blood-veiled face that resists methods for extirpating the usually docile dead. When Castor begins probing more deeply, he quickly finds himself harassed by a ravenous succubus, a belligerent fellow exorcist and a slimy Eastern European pimp.

Mike Carey’s The Devil You Know intrigued me…after I was able to slog through the first 80 pages. At page 20 I was scratching my head. At 40 I was getting mildly annoyed. By 60 I was ready to throw the darn thing up against the wall. But by 80 I was hooked. I typically don’t give a book that long to gel for me. But since this was my first book in months that I sat down to read and since the last few months had been so impossibly crappy, I thought I might have been projecting my feelings onto the book.
A part of me feels that The Devil You Know could have been edited better. it was very dense. Lots of description, lots of ironic internal dialogue, but, that’s the main character, Fix. It’s how he is. A little over the top. A smartass who is inside his head — a lot.
The story was intriguing once the plot actually settled down and began moving. Fix is an exorcist. A good one, who has made mistakes in the past. One mistake in particular has transformed his best friend into a half demon lunatic and Fix suffers from this — boy does he suffer. Anyway, he’s been brought in to get rid of a ghost, but slowly he becomes intrigued as to why the ghost is there and as he investigates the story behind her death, his life becomes more bizarre.
Carey did a wonderful job with the dialogue. Fix has a great personality. He self-deprecating and a little condescending. The other characters were…ok. I liked his friend Pen and I was definitely intrigued by Rafe/Asmodeus but the people that were integral to the actual storyline at the building where the ghost haunted were a little stereotypical and/or a bit annoying. I liked the paranormal mixed in with London landmarks and British humor. I think this might be a solid start to an intriguing mystery series. But I will have to read Vicious Circle in order to get a solid feel for this author.
If the prose could be tamed a bit and the extraneous information strategically taken out, then I will stick with Fix.

Topics: Mystery, Paranormal, The B's, Urban Fantasy |

2 Responses to “The Devil You Know by Mike Carey”

  1. Pages tagged "vengeful" Says:
    August 17th, 2008 at 5:16 am

    [...] bookmarks tagged vengeful The Devil You Know by Mike Carey saved by 9 others     hibiki2364 bookmarked on 08/17/08 | [...]

  2. succubus Says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 3:40 am

    [...] comics-writer Carey. Felix Fix Castor is an itinerant exorcist who like a certain famous group ofhttp://bewitchedbybooks.com/2008/08/13/the-devil-you-know-by-mike-carey/American Teen is too timid to peer beneath the surface of its hammy adolescents Las Vegas [...]

Comments