Customer Reviews

Vicious Circle

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Felix Castor is back in Vicious Circle. Once again the exorcist for hire is working in a London where the dead walk among the living. While politicians are trying to decide on what rights the dead should have, Felix is trying to change the focus of his life. After the experiences detailed in the first book, The Devil You Know, the exorcist for hire is no longer so sure that what he is doing is the right thing.

So when a couple asks him to rescue the kidnapped ghost of their child, he is unable to resist the challenge. Yet as always, appearances are deceiving. Felix soon finds himself in deep water as he chases the exorcist who abducted the ghost. He in turn, is being tailed by a pair of weres that begrudgingly obey their orders to leave him alive-for now. Throw in murders, riots and a haunted church, and Felix learns that he may be the only thing standing between the world and the apocalypse.

Mike Carey has taken the complex world he introduced us to in the first Felix Castor novel and expanded its borders. None of the characters are simple. Each person struggles with the burdens that have been dropped on them. Whether it is a succubus trying to fit into human society or the leader of an ex-communicated secret order, Carey fleshes them out and makes them real. Along the way he drops hints about ethics and responsibility, leaving us to wonder who the real monsters are.

Vicious Circle is a terrific book. It will stand comfortably on it own, but is also a rock-solid follow up to the first Felix Castor novel.

Armchair Interviews says: Count on Felix Castor to fill in a good story.

Felix Castor returns in a dark sequel to The Devil You Know. This time he is trying to contact the ghost of a girl on her parent's behalf, and disentangle his friend Rafi from a rather nasty demon, and pay his rent, and cope with a succubus who wants to be his sidekick. This is edgy, intelligent writing. In spite of, or perhaps because of(like Neil Gaiman), his background in graphic novels, the Felix Castor novelss are not an easy read. I loved it and hope the third one comes out soon.

"Vicious Circle" is a wonderfully entertaining, fantasy thriller a la noir. The novel abounds with otherworldly creatures - demons, ghosts, zombies, a succubus, lycanthropes, (loup-garous). and one of the Devil's highest ranking minions. What makes the novel really unique, however, is the humor. Felix, ("Fix"), Castor is one of the wittiest protagonists I have come across in a long while. And many of Mike Carey's other characters are real originals. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud while shaking in my proverbial boots.

Castor is a hard-boiled but very sympathetic freelance exorcist/ghostbuster. London is his stomping ground. His business card reads "F. Castor Eradications." Fix, as his friends call him, is down on his luck and owes his landlady back rent - nothing unusual about this. Close friend, and former landlady, PEN, aka Pamela Elisa Bruckner, lives in a three story inverted penthouse - the penthouse is underground - and the monstrosity of a house has been in her family for eons, literally. She is a Wiccan Priestess and has been Castor's buddy since college days.

The primary tool Castor uses in his trade is a whistle, a Clarke original, Key of D, ("the saddest chord"). He plays music on his tin whistle to bind and banish spirits. And naturally, he takes it everywhere. The whistle is for him what a gun is for a cop. Since the Millennium, which brought a great upsurge in supernatural activity, he has had to use his whistle and all his other exorcising accoutrements frequently

Felix accidentally wove a master demon, Asmodeus, into his friend Rafi's soul about a year ago. Rafi and his demon now reside in a facility for the violent criminally insane. And all hell breaks lose, literally, when Asmodeus takes over Rafi's mind and acts out. At the top of Felix's "to do" list is to exorcise this powerful demon and set his friend free before he is transferred to a "bottom of the line" facility. This is not an easy task, as magical textbooks put Asmodeus at the top of the "infernal pecking order," and he is burning Rafi up from the inside out!

Felix's priorities multiply when he is contacted by the parents of a missing girl. They hire him to find their daughter. There's one catch - their daughter, Abbie, is a ghost. Abbie drowned on a school trip last summer, and about three months later she "came back home," to her parents delight. If they cannot have their daughter back in the flesh, they'll take the spirit rather than lose her altogether. A few days before, a disreputable exorcist named Dennis Peace took Abbie's ghost, binding her to him, and claiming to be her real father. Abbie's parents believe that only a strong exorcist like "Fix" can go up against Peace and recover their daughter's ghost.

Eventually, Felix gets a fix on Peace, but two loup garous show up with an equal interest in the exorcist kidnapper. They bludgeon Felix and do all kinds of other nasty things to him to get him to talk, but he doesn't have the information they want. So, he is left in really bad shape - barely alive. And the case of the missing ghost becomes more complex - all kinds of twists & turns, and lots more action and violence.

Meanwhile, Felix's friend, Ajulutsikae, a powerful succubus, is trying her hand at exorcism - one can never have too many skills. Felix is allowed to call the sexual incubus "Juliet," and she keeps her powers in check for him. Although she does drive him crazy with lust, he is able to control himself when in her company. Juliet is investigating a haunted church. Another one of Hell's minions has woven itself into the fabric of the church. Resolving this dilemma and saving the congregation proves to be too complex a task for Juliet's novice capabilities - so she calls upon Felix for help. One could say his whistle is being put to good use.

This is no predictable paranormal mystery. The mystery(s) is extremely difficult to solve and the villains are almost too powerful to defeat. A sinister, shadowy air permeates the novel. Carey's exotic characters, the human and not so human, are wonderfully conceived and at times outrageous. Carey's descriptions are very creative and often funny - which provide a break from all the heavy stuff. However, too much extraneous information and way too much graphic violence kept me from rating "Vicious Circle" 5 Stars. The book needs a bit more editing and toning down.

"Vicious Circle" is the second in the Felix Castor series. Although this series is Mike Carey's first foray into fiction, he is a highly successful comic book writer who created the critically acclaimed Vertigo series Lucifer, which garnered numerous international awards and was nominated for five Eisners. I can't wait to read book 3, "Dead Men's Boots.
Jana Perskie

Vicious Circle
The Devil You Know
Dead Men's Boots
Thicker Than Water: A Felix Castor Novel (Felix Castor Novel 4)

The second installment of Carey's exorcist, Felix Castor, lacks the urgency of the first book. Weighed down by a number of interconnecting storylines that don't all work to move the plot forward, VICIOUS CIRCLE is about 100 pages too long. It is filled with a great deal of back story, some of it a bit too familiar to regular readers of HELLBLAZER, to maintain a true feeling of suspense for the duration of the novel. The tension seems to build throughout until the brakes are put on for a bit of exposition about Castor's past or philosophy about the post-dead. Carey's a solid writer and he works hard to create this parallel world where the dead walk again, either as spirits or some physical manifestation, but it just proves to be too much for this one book. The story gets lost amidst the details and Carey's clever take on the occult investigator gets lost in the details. I still have high hopes for Carey's character and hope now that his world is set up he can concentrate on the story rather than the minutiae.

After listening to The Devil You Know by Mike Carey I immediately downloaded this sequel from Audible. It was one of my better purchases this year. First, as I mentioned in my review of TDYK, I like Michael Kramer's voice and narration style. It may have some problems for someone who knows English accents well so try a sample on the Audible website to see if it is going to be a nuisance. However, one of the good things about Kramer's narration style is that after while he fades away and one is left with the voice of Fix Castor.

I did wonder exactly how it was that Fix has avoided significant physical damage considering how often he is beat up. But that is one of the tropes of the PI story, as is the sexy female companion-- actually an Incubus-- and the way the story is wrapped around itself so that bits that at first seem disconnected end up fitting as neatly into the plot as one would hope.

There's a also some pathos and some black humor. Don't start here though. Go back and read The Devil You Know first.

In my seemingly hopeless attempt at finding a good paranormal detective series that (1) is NOT a thinly disguised romance novel; and (2) has a "male" leading character instead of the now cliche tough and horny female, I somehow managed to stumble across Mike Carey's "Felix Castor" series.

Felix Castor is a professional exorcist living in London who recently had a bout with his conscious. You see, with the help of a tin whistle, Felix hires himself out to hunt down and vanquish the pesky ghosts & various demons and such which have recently begun to manifest in increasingly disturbing numbers around town. He never really gave much thought to what he did beyond the fact that it was a good way to make a living until one day somebody asks him "where" it is that he's sending these wayward spirits and if it's the right thing to do. This, combined with his own overwhelming guilt over his disasterous attempt to exorcise a viciously evil demon out of his best friend, compels him to try and use his gift only for good (and if he can make a profit in the process, that's good too).

I love characters who are both more AND less than who they think they are. Felix Castor considers himself an average Joe with a special (if not singularly unique) talent. He's not the nicest, smartest, fastest, strongest or anythingest ... he's just a guy trying to do right by both his clients and the spirits he's asked to exorcise. The big questions for him are "Who are the true victims here? The clients that hire him? Or the ghosts he's asked to hunt down?" The answers to these questions are never easy for Felix to find out. In fact, they're downright dangerous! But that doesn't stop him from doing everything he can to see the case through - even if it could lead to his own death!

I won't give anymore of the plot away, but suffice it to say that Mike Carey sure knows how to spin a good tale. He mixes horror, humor and action in a wonderful way and Felix and the other characters come to life as you read. Once I started reading these books it was almost painful for me to put them down. So if you're like me and enjoy a good urban fantasy detective novel with a great male lead and little to no romance, then give Felix Castor a try.

After reading the first Felix Castor novel, "The Devil You Know" I went scouring the internet to see if Mike Carey had written any others. Eureka! His writing is superbly engrossing. His main character, Felix, is refreshingly realistic and sarcastic about his adventures. This is a dark novel that is not without great moments of hilarity in the form of dry cynicism, making it more accessible and infinitely entertaining. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who is sick of the old "grr, I'm a scary (insert ghost and/or goblin name here)" and is looking for something with a little more substance. I too, cannot wait for another Felix Castor novel to arrive on the market.

First of all I want to say that both of his novels as a whole are basically good but I'm left scratching my head wondering why the author felt he must tell us the answers to all the mysteries exactly 4/5ths of the way through. Maybe the author just didn't know how to show the story naturally and began to spout all the facts. It was like reading a dissertation instead of a novel. I was left feeling cheated. I won't be buying his next novel.

I really enjoyed the book. Yes, for some the plot is predictable. I could kind of figure things out pretty quick, but I wasn't frustrated that Castor didn't see it sooner. Sometimes in real life, when you're close to a situation, you're too close to see what's going on. The book even references him being dense more than a couple times. It's part of his character.
I like that he is developing so many of the fun characters, such as Juliet and Nicky. I really felt involved with their story lines. My only issue was with Sergeant Basquiat. She was just so annoying! I really didn't like the parts with her in it. Otherwise, it's a great book.

I enjoyed this as much as the first book. Parents claiming someone stole their daughters ghost wants it back. Crazy succubus, crazy exorcist, still possessed best friend, angry female room mate, snarky Felix Castor. Love it.