Customer Reviews

The Devil You Know (Felix Castor)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was an entertaining read, a detective story that involved solving something other than your usual crimes; this time the supernatural is involved and who better to battle it than Felix Castor, a freelance exorcist with musical talent.

Witty, charming and intelligent, he maps out the grid of the ghosts he's getting rid by playing music on his tin whistle, but this time something else is going on, for once Felix starts to care about why the ghost is haunting the Bonnington Archive, a posh literary mecca of manuscripts and forgotten memories. Instead of wanting to get rid of the pesky hooded lady in white he realizes that something fishy is going on in the seemingly civilized and proper world of art and treasures and some people have crossed moral lines resulting in a haunting. Felix has other things to worry about, a big guy named Scrub who forces him to take on other projects, a mysterious succubus summoned from hell to get rid of him - someone doesn't want him to solve the enigma - and a brothel pimp who wants him to work on his side. Suffocated by negative sources he must solve the mystery of the mute ghost while under the watchful eyes of Alice, the lady in charge who seems to run the Archive while sleeping with the boss.

I liked the set up; the archives - quite an interesting place since I love libraries and various other paper storage places. It echoed of slight creepiness at night when Felix would sneak in to do his work, while seemingly alone he bumped into some things that kept threatening his life. This book was a fun read, although not too deep it still kept me interested enough to finish it in record time and the ending has quite interesting, I didn't make the connections until they were shown to me, so that's good, surprises are always welcome in my world of reading. I also liked that it left some threads running, I can only conclude that this story line will continue but with different clues and a new crime.

- Kasia S.

I am a big fan of Mike Carey, admittedly. I love Lucifer and HellBlazer, both comic books written by Mr. Carey. It excited me to see a comic book writer writing a novel, because I always hope it will shed more public light on what amazing writers are in the comic world right now. (There have been some great cross overs, such as Neil Gaiman, but we can always use one more.)

Anyway, when I first picked up The Devil You Know and read the jacket, I thought perhaps this would be a soft-boiled version of John Constantine. I was wrong.

Felix Castor is close to Constantine, no argument there. They share an attitude that is grim and at the same time blackly humorous. They're both working in the trade of the spirit world, and they both have friends with chips on the shoulder, chips pointed at them. However, "Fix" has no place for magic in his exorcisms, and does his best to be an atheist. Constantine's bread and butter is magic, and he knows too well that there is a heaven and a hell.

The Devil You Know is a witty mystery with delightfully dark characters. I read it in a day, sucked into the story as sure as if Fix was playing the whistle into my ear. I loved it, I loved each character, I loved guessing at the next plot twist, and being pleasantly surprised when I was right, and more pleased when I was wrong.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good ghost story, a good murder mystery, or just good writing, great characters, and a twisting storyline.

I just finished the book 10 minutes ago. Mike Carey hit on every cliche of the hard-boiled detective genre. And I mean that as the highest possible compliment. All the best hard-boiled detective stories are ultimately about the murder victim, and a flawed champion seeking to lay his or her troubled ghost to rest by exposing the culprit. (For the record, I'm aware of how pompous that last sentence was. I've got a few beers in me. Give me a freakin break.) Carey adds a new layer with the supernatural element, making the victim's ghost a real rather than a metaphorical presence. The casting of an actual succubus in the femme fatale role was a nice touch, too. And no matter how outlandish the story became, Carey's feel for realistic settings and characters kept the whole thing grounded. It was gritty, disturbing, funny and surprisingly tender. At the end, Carey seemed to be laying the groundwork for a continuing series. I hope I'm right, because I'd like to read more.

No spoilers.

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, by Mike Carey, is an Urban Fantasy that you will most likely find shelved in the horror section of your local bookstore. It is about an exorcist, Felix Castor, who is looking to get out of the game, but predictably takes one last job. That job is a haunting of a museum in London. Obviously, things go to hell in a hand-basket. Quite literally actually. Demons and all that.

I understand that this isn't a new formula. Felix is pretty downtrodden, and he's poor, and he can be a tad snarky at times. Sound familiar? I'm pretty sure I see Simon R. Green and Jim Butcher jumping up and down waving their arms in the back of the class. Yeah. The formula won't be a big surprise.

Luckily for you and I, the writing and the tone were what set this novel apart. Carey's novel is decidedly grimmer with less comedic content. You know what? This is a good thing. The PoV is an EXORCIST for heaven's sake (Hehe, that wasn't even intentional!). This novel just FEELS different than the typical Urban Fantasy you see today. And boys and girls, it feels good.

It a sense, it feels like Carey took the Harry Dresden character from Butcher's novels and hardened the edges a bit. Felix Castor is a borderline alcoholic. He's more violent. He cracks jokes less often. He's made a ton more irreparable mistakes (some explained in detail, with others left for the sequels). And those mistakes have had serious consequences. The character is darker. I love it.

Now that isn't to say there aren't problems. Carey's transitions can be pretty poor. Sometimes I would start a new chapter, and be completely unsure what was going on for several pages. More than once I was checking to see if pages had been ripped out of my copy of the novel. Seriously, come on man. It happened enough times to be a nuisance. And a lot of these odd transitions were seemingly random scenes whose only purpose was to give the PoV a "brilliant idea" later on. If the museum exorcism was his last job, then why does Castor take other jobs at the same time (well, apart from the heavy-handed foreshadowing they give)? Also, there is a lot of standing around. You'd think with a demon chasing you (The demon was well done. A mark better than the Butcher incarnation of the same type of demon), there'd be more...well, chasing.

Problems aside, there is a lot going right in this novel, and the sequels have made it onto my lengthy list of "books that have me excited to read." There is a much more serious tone in this novel, and of course the question left for the readers at the end, "Where to the recipients of exorcism go?" THE DEVIL YOU KNOW is quite a fun and easy read, and you should definitely go pick up the paperback of it.

Recommended Age: 17 and up. Lots of prostitution references and showings, not to mention the idea of exorcism isn't for the young. Also, see the info below as well.
Language: Yessir. Some of the characters are particularly foul-mouthed.
Violence: Yeah, especially at the end. Some may consider it disturbing.
Sex: Our PoV is in a strip club for half the novel. And he is chased by a succubus. Who catches him. Yeah, there is some sex in this novel.

Maybe I don't give comic books enough credit or Carey is extremely gifted, but this book was like nothing I'd ever read before. He talks about stuff I hadn't read anywhere else and provides a leading character that I felt like I'd known all my life. He writes with such a unique perspective and original plot that the whole time I was sort of blown away. Above all that he didn't try intertwine lots of theology and religion in the plot, he kept it as neutral as possible and added a comical flair to top it off.

SYNOPSIS:
Felix Castor just will never make it as a clown! Take my word for that because unhappy parents of the birthday boy aren't going to pay for you to put the nasty little twit in his place by taking a photo of him which shows the ghost of a boy he killed - it was all a joke gone horribly wrong of course. Yeah, sure. I believed it as much as Felix did. Felix's friend and landlady Pen needs money for a mortgage coming due on her house. Felix needs to finally get back to work to help her out by paying his back rent. When the job of exorcising a ghost at the Bonnington Archive comes up, Felix really doesn't have any choice but to take the job. His self-imposed exile from the profession of exorcist has finally come up against the reality of needing to earn some money. And Felix was a very good exorcist, even a natural, until the terrible event with his friend Rafi and the demon Asmodeus.

OPINION:
This is the first book in the series concerning Felix Castor, the exorcist who locates ghosts and calls them to him with notes he plays on a tin whistle. Once he has a fix on them he can lead the ghost to that other place where it needs to be. I had hoped and was expecting to find lots of background information about Raphael, Felix and Pen from their early days as friends to fill in background holes from reading book two Vicious Circle (Felix Castor) and book three Dead Men's Boots (Felix Castor) out of sequence. I did get some deeper understanding of those characters, but it is clear to me now that the author has planned to keep these primary characters more or less in the background in the novels. Each book has a riddle for Felix to solve which reveals itself during the hunt for the ghost to be exorcised.

This story revolves around a sex slave ring where the girls are brought from eastern Europe to London. If I had known that was going to be the main focus of the story I would probably have left this book unread. It honestly is not necessary to the reader's understanding of what happens in future books and I found the subject matter very disturbing. So now you know some of what to expect. Castor is still written as a marvelous, self-effacing character who continually pokes fun at himself and who will be the first to admit to his non-hero status. He gets hurt, he gets beat up in fights, he rushes headlong into situations he knows are going to get him into trouble. He also has a tendency to open his mouth and put his life in jeopardy when he positively knows better. These are things which make him so attractive as a protagonist for me.

RECOMMENDATION:
Even though I found the subject matter of this novel to be disturbing to read about (as I sit in my ivory tower) I still think Mike Carey is one of the best authors of urban fantasy novels out there. I've now read the first three Felix Castor novels and look forward to many more in the series. You get to meet all manner of evil things and evil people, but along the way there are also those characters you can cheer for and situations you really need to help Felix get out of. It's a pretty good habit to perpetuate.

I was totally hooked by this book. An exorcist who creates music to exorcise ghosts, demons. Love the character and his sense of humor. His best friend is posessed by a demon he cant exorcise because he made a mistake. A room mate in love with that posessed friend, a haunted museum he has to cleanse, a zombie fence, loved it.

Felix Castor has been on sabbatical from the exorcism biz after an incident with a friend that left him (friend not Felix) sharing space with the demon Asmodeus. But, Felix is a bit broke and needs some cash to pay the rent, which prompts him to accept a gig exorcising a ghost currently haunting an archive in London. Asmodeus/Rafi warns Felix not to take the job, but beggars can't really be choosers, and Felix is a bit curious. Now, it should be said that Castor and pals live in a time when ghosts, zombies, and weres are, for reasons not totally explained, appearing quite frequently in the world. In fact, there are some who are even crying for spectral rights and such, which would severely impede Felix's job of banishing them from our world, not something he chooses to devote much thought to. But when the ghost in the archive saves him, he begins to believe that she warrants a little more investigation as far as identifying her and her reasons for haunting the archive in the first place. Felix's job is not made easy, however, because no one really counted on his looking into the matter. Plus, someone has a hit out on our dark hero and he's not sure who or what is behind it.

I really loved this book. It's a traditional detective mystery wrapped in an urban fantasy setting and it works brilliantly paired with Carey's particular style.

Felix Castor is a "paranormal investigator" - sort of like a private detective for ghosts and the like, similar to Harry Dreseden Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) (Apparently there is enough of this sort of story to become a sub-genre of detective and / or ghost stories - who knew?) but whose primary vocation is to exocise unwanted spirits. This creates its own existential dilemna (where *do* exorcised spirits go, after all? Is it possible to kill a ghost?), which in turn is a sub-plot in what turns out to be a pretty good detective (ghost?) story.

In _The Devil You Know_ (the first of several books by Carey), Castor is hired to get rid of a young female ghost haunting an archive. As he begins to track down the wayward spirit, Castor is drawn into a seedy underworld of the supernatural, including a delightfully evil (and menacing) pimp, his brutal henchman, a soul-sucking demon and a competing exorcist. Through his wonderful storytelling, Carey ties these seemingly unrelated characters (and their stories) together in a riveting conclusion.

Had Carey been able to tie his loose ends together (and provide an epilogue) more concisely, this would be a 5-star book. Instead, Carey concludes the story in a manner reminiscent of a 1970s detective series (or Scooby-Doo: "I would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids!") whereby the accused, after he is revelaed, spills his story filling in any gaps or lose ends in the story Castor was unable to figure out.

That aside, it was a remarkably entertaining read. Given that _The Devil You Know_ (a great double-entendre that I will leave you to discover for yourself) is Carey's debut, I have high hopes for his next work, and Iook forward to reading it.

I've got some fairly compromised vision, and as such, I listen to a ton of audiobooks.

For an audiobook to be engaging, you not only need a compelling and interesting story, but also a reader that effectively conveys the words and voices of the characters created and penned by the author.

With this in mind, I don't believe I've ever listened to a book so wonderful as "The Devil You Know."

This is the kind of book you listen to not so much to get from A to B and finally find out "who dunnit" - as this information is really only periphery. Rather, this is the kind of audiobook you listen to to simply enjoy the journey, the wonderful prose and deadpan humor, the clever turn of phrase, and the rich and vivid descriptions of the various characters and scenes.

The reader (Mike Kramer) is absolutely perfect in his delivery of the material - and I sincerely hope he continues to read for quality authors in the future.

So, to sum, I can't recommend this audiobook enough - it's simply a delight!