Re: Thread for The Calling, David Mack's first original novel (it's ou
Ok, finally got around to writing this. My review (spoiler-free):
If you've read many of my posts at all, you'll know that in my opinion Mack absolutely owns Star Trek these days. He's easily my favorite author of the bunch, and so I was looking forward to this a lot, despite never having read any urban fantasy before. The short version of the review is that my expectations were absolutely met, and this is a book that any fan of Mack's Trek work should pick up immediately.
Like any other author, though, Mack has his weaknesses. I was actually surprisingly disappointed with the first few chapters of the book; Mack’s style which is so effortless and gripping when writing intensely emotional or action-oriented scenes comes across blocky and clumsy when describing simple scenes with Tom and his wife. Couple that with the fact that this is, as I mentioned, my first foray into urban fantasy, and as such I sort of don’t really speak the right language, and I wasn’t too fond of the first third or so of the book.
But at some point, as inevitably happens with all of Mack’s works, the stakes became raised high enough that I was thoroughly enthralled, and by the time the book reached its climax - the insane Times Square station action scene I mentioned before - I was utterly blown away. The second half of the book is every bit the intense and incredibly characterized roller-coaster I’ve come to expect from Mack’s stories, where the events and actions themselves are so strong that the efficient prose becomes the perfect vehicle to transmit the story, since flowery emotional detail would just be redundant. Scenes like one of Tom sitting in his truck after a fight, shaking from nervous overload and shock from his injuries, are as emotional and gripping as anything I've read, even when stated as simply as possible.
In a lot of ways, also, urban fantasy is an interesting fit for Mack, who seems to in general be most fascinated by stories involving protagonists caught up in huge, massive situations beyond their control; magical wars (here), fights between supremely powerful aliens (Destiny, Vanguard), no-win terrorism-riddled Iraq parallels (A Time To Kill/Heal), etc etc. As ever, the moral force of his work comes through when describing people pushed to their limit by situations they can’t change, and then finding out what they can win, how they can fight, and what’s worth fighting for from there. And as ever, once things get swinging, it’s all but impossible to put down, and every character (even the evil ones) becomes someone who's story you want to read. (In one particularly hilarious detail, our chief antagonist has recently decided to quit smoking, giving him a charmingly personal struggle to follow in the midst of his general evilness.)
In the end, I still feel the book would’ve been helped by a bit more narrative flair (even after the beginning, often any new place will be described in lengthy textbook fashion, removing the reader from the narrative in what sometimes feels like scenery descriptions from a play or movie script) but the story here is absolutely worthwhile. There's only one other weak point that bothered me a bit; the mythology is deep and potentially awesome, but it only really becomes so at the end. The revelations in the last scene are fascinating, and make me really want a sequel, but up until then it often seems a bit like it's just a gimmick to get Tom into the situation in the first place. There are some nice hints along the way, enough that you're interested enough, but then what we see at the end shows how important the whole setup really could be and what an amazing series this might someday become.
So, final word? It isn’t perfect, and it’ll be much weaker in hindsight if there are never any sequels published. But I’ve never tried urban fantasy before, and I’m completely satisfied with the tale and can guarantee I’ll instantly buy any future books in the same series. I’d recommend it without hesitation to anyone who enjoyed his Trek books, especially if you're as fond as I am of the moral themes he explores and his amazing ability to push characters as far as they can go, and see who they can be when almost everything is lost.
