Nightlife

Ever since Cal was small he and his half-brother Niko have been seeing monsters. They named them Grendels and knew they were after Cal even if they didn't know why. They should have suspected because their mother wasn't just being cruel when she told Cal she named him Caliban because he was a monster, she was telling the truth. When Cal is fourteen, Dad comes calling, right on the day when Cal and Niko were going to leave forever. His mother is killed, Niko is injured, and Cal is taken away. Ever-loyal Niko stays and waits, hoping Cal will somehow return. Two days later he does, except it's been two years for Cal. We catch up with them five years later. They've been running all that time. Niko gave up college and now works as a show more bodyguard and Cal helps him out when he's not tending bar. They still see grendels, though they haven't seen one in a while. Until now, that is.

The character of Niko scared me at first because he seemed too perfect. He has long hair that he braids down his back. He can fight in many styles. He is proficient with a sword. He's all human, unlike Cal, but he's a nearly unstoppable warrior. He's stoic. He speaks like your typical high-fantasy elf. I was sure I would hate him. Except underneath all that Niko is a real three-dimensional person, not the cardboard cutout I feared he'd be. He's terrified something will happen to his brother (again) and he's doing the best he can to survive. He loves his brother and that's obvious: they tease, they spar, they slap each other upside the head. They're very believable brothers.

Cal is a teenager. He's 19 but between the lost years when he was taken and the upheavals in his life he isn't anywhere near adult, nor is he in any way a child. He's immature when it comes to other people and very mature when it comes to monsters in the dark. I like him. I like him a lot. He's close only to Niko, he hasn't had the time, inclination, or ability to let anonye else get close. This comes to the fore in this book when he meets Georgina, a psychic with a crush on him, and car salesman Rob Fellows.

Rather predictably, I fell hard for Rob Fellows. Robin Goodfellow, actually. An immortal being (a puck) who is older than humans and knows what Cal is. Through him the grendels get a name: The Auphe. They're utterly evil, feared by everyone who knows of them, and Cal is the son of one. At first Robin is scared, then he's intrigued. Then I fell in love with him. He's a drunk, an asshole, a womanizer, and he's obviously got a background but there's no swimming in Lake Manpain for him. Oh, and he has a crush on Niko. Cal can't help liking him even though there's no way he wants to let another person into his life.

The Auphe are back and they want Cal. Since trying to train him failed years ago when they took him now they're going to use the Darkling to possess his body and use him to end the world as we know it. Far too much of the book is told from the POV of the Darkling for my taste, but that's understandable because the book is from Cal's POV and switching to anyone else would have made the story not as good. It's important we know what happened to Cal while the Darkling was in control.

It's a good read. The characters are tipped on their heads enough that I didn't get that same-old same-old feeling you can sometimes get. Seen one elf/vampire/werewolf you've seen them all, you know? The brothers felt real to me, Robin was awesome, and I enjoyed all the secondary characters populating this world. Fun. show less

Two things in particular distinguish this novel from other series in the increasingly crowded field of dark urban fantasy. One is that you simply get a different character dynamic when the main characters are two brothers such as Cal & Neko Leandro; at least it worked really well for me. The other distinctive quality that stands out is Thurman's pitiless depiction of gleeful nihilism and violence in her antagonists, and the costs of having to become almost as destructive by the heroes if one is to face down such an all-embracing evil.

It's been quite a while since a book's characters were so instantly charismatic that they practically grabbed me by the sleeve and led me (or in these guys' case, it's probably more like inelegant dragging) into the story and world. Barely two or three chapters in and I was already sure I had found a rare dark fantasy series to add to my list of favorites.

Cal Leandros and his older brother Niko have been on the run for almost longer than he can remember. Their life has become constant movement, paranoia, fear, invisibility, and desperation to evade their pursuers, the hideous and terrifying Grendels. Monsters from the dawn of time, they will stop at nothing to find and claim Cal...he is one of their kind, after all, since his father was show more a Grendel. Cal despises his monster heritage, but he also knows it's impossible to escape from. Not even the dark tangle of New York, riddled with its own supernatural denizens, can hide them for long, however much Cal longs to finally find one place to stay. But his brother Niko is utterly devoted to keeping Cal alive, and staying is too much of a risk. In fact, they may have already stayed too long...

Cal's first person narration in an instant and sustaining hook; he's cynical, crude, lazy, and snarky as heck, but he's also sharp, street smart, intuitive, ferociously devoted to his brother, a ruthless fighter, and has a streak of confused and tormented realism that truly brings him to life. He's very real, and surprisingly easy to get attached to as a narrator. His fascinatingly likable brother Niko is the perfect foil, much to Cal's combined affection and chagrin; he disdains all things unhealthy and uncivil and is a walking library, an utterly lethal fighter, and a perfect gentleman all at once. Other great characters round out the cast, all of whom I very much hope to see more of in future books.

The villains are equally well written; the Grendels (or Auphes as they're later known) are a great new twist on paranormal monsters and are really and truly terrifying instead of providing cheap thrills, something not all authors seem to achieve nowadays. And another, much more personal villain is perhaps even scarier; he puts his own twist on Cal's narration that is integrated very, very well into the story's events and forces the reader to experience the struggles Cal goes through with a chilling intimacy. It's a great narrative device, but I won't say any more about it here. Suffice to say that windows and mirrors at night suddenly look a lot creepier to me.

The last time I can remember starting a paranormal series with this much immediate promise was the Morganville Vampires series, so I find myself hoping that I have just as many great adventures ahead of me with Cal and Niko.

Note: I couldn't help but notice that this book bears a couple similarities to Sarah Rees Brennan's equally awesome The Demon's Lexicon series (mostly in the dynamic between a chilly and cynical younger brother associated with the dark forces and a bookish, mellow-yet-badass older brother who are utterly devoted to each other). Not in a bad way at all, mind you, and this was published earlier anyway, but any fans of one series should definitely check out the other. show less

Cal is a monster. Well, half-monster. His father is a nasty creature called an Auphe--the basis for elf mythology, but the only accurate thing is the pointed ears. And for some reason, the Auphe have been seeking Cal for years. It's only because of the grim devotion of older half-brother Niko that Cal has stayed alive through their years on the run. That's about to change. The Auphe want Cal. Badly.

Rob Thurman has created a unique urban fantasy series following the first-person vantage point of Cal Leandros. Most urban fantasy is aimed towards women, but this book should strongly appeal to everyone through Cal's sarcastic, snippy tone. Actually, all of the characters are fantastic. His older brother is a walking arsenal and the perfect show more guy to have at your back, and the supporting cast is just as brilliant. Cal and Niko aren't straightforward good guys; they are the Batmans of their world, surviving by grim determination and a steady aim. Normally they wouldn't be my type, but Thurman's solid writing and fantastic voice completely won me over. Just what I needed... another series to get hooked on. show less

Nightlife wasn't what I expected. Given the blurb and cover (a mopey, darkhaired guy, dimly lit city), I thought I was in for a hardboiled detection/urban fantasy romp with the standard snarky, secretly idealistic, slightly tarnished white knight who ventures down the mean streets to try to bring a little justice back into the world, etc, etc. Instead, I was thrown into a world that I would describe (tautologically, I know) as "dark noir." I tend to stay out of dark noir, where the world is not so much shades of grey as totally lightless, where the protagonist commits atrocities that make it impossible to separate hero from villain, where the humour is black, the tone is nihilistic, and any idealism is strangled in its infancy. show more Nightlife puts a unique twist on dark noir. This world isn't actually nihilistic a la Cain or Kadrey's Sandman Slim, and there certainly is a very parfait (if not particularly gentil) knight on the scene, but Caliban Leandros, narrator, is literally part monster, the scion of an alcohol-sodden prostitute and a supernatural fiend.

As a child, Cal was spirited away by his monstrous sire into the hellish realm of the Auphe (a variant of elf, but not precisely the Santa's-little-helper variety), then apparently escaped, incoherent and almost bereft of sanity, and landed right back home. Cal's improbably self-sacrificial older brother, Nikos, promptly made made it his life's mission to protect and hide Cal from the monsters that dog their path. A few years later, Cal and Nikos are living it up in NYC--and the monsters are right on their trail. Even worse, there's something more sinister than the mere possession of Cal's body and soul at stake.

One thing I loved about the story was the narrative twist: the hero is not the same individual as the narrator. Cal, the narrator, is often heartbreakingly helpless while Niko must perform insane stunts of combat prowess and bitter sacrifices to protect and save his brother. Committing my usual sin of comparing all UF to the Dresden Files, it's as if the partly monstrous Thomas Raith started narrating Dresden's antics. (Oh wait, I guess that already happened--"Backup." Heh.) Cal makes for a somewhat morose and angsty protagonist; if you think Dresden is a whiner, you really, really don't want to meet Cal. Nikos fits the standard hero stereotypes: impossibly handsome, suave, intelligent, and with almost supernatural fighting prowess. (He also wears a duster at one point--a definite tell for determining the UF hero.) In fact, all of the characters are sort of on the superhero model--everyone has a special talent and everyone tends to be impossibly good-looking and improbably fantastic at battle. The general setup--two brothers born of tragedy fighting the supernatural, the younger one a part-monster who is destined to help end the world, the older one determined to do anything and sacrifice anything to save him--feels scarily similar to the TV show Supernatural. In my opinion, Supernatural did a much better job in making Nikos/Dean rounded, imperfect, and ultimately likable, but Thurman creates a much more sympathetic Cal/Sam. If Nikos, a blonde and ponytailed James Bond, had been the narrator, I would have found him unbearable, but through the eyes of his hero-worshipping baby brother, he had a certain charm. I can understand Cal's slightly grudging adoration; I have an older sister, after all. At the same time, their relationship left me with the same vague sense of embarrassment I get seeing wrestlers practice grappling--just a bit too intimate. Cal's sense of self is so closely tied to his brother that in some ways, he lacks his own identity. His role as a narrator gives us a unique glimpse into his thoughts and helps, perhaps paradoxically, to create a less egocentric character than that of Sam in Supernatural. In terms of narrative voice, I do think Cal overdid the cursing; I think I saw a maximum of three contiguous profanity-free pages.

What I had real trouble with is the narration switch in the middle into a pure "dark noir" narrator, a character gleefully and sickeningly evil. Literally over half of the book is spent in the head of this character as he scampers around the city, dealing out pain and misery and reporting his sick pleasure at the prospect of suffering to the reader. This is where I felt the book shifted into dark noir; while it maintains a clear sense of morality, narration by a sick psychopath is one of the hallmarks of this subgenre, and the reason that I avoid it. I spent the entire section bouncing between horror and disgust, and there was no detection or mystery to relieve my intellect from the ick-factor. Although I felt sick at the pain of their ordeal, I had trouble bonding with the characters, even the protagonists, because I felt trapped in the head of a sick monster. While I could abstractly recognize the skill of a writer who made me feel that horrified but kept me reading and engaged, this was not my type of book.

The world that Thurman creates is everything I could ask of good urban fantasy pulp. Thurman uses the absurd to balance the almost unrelenting pain in most of the novel: there's a vampire who traded in blood for iron supplements, Robin Goodfellow practices his smarms and charms as a used car salesman, and a psychic medium holds her practice in an ice cream parlour. At the same time, the city hides disgusting bog creatures, the predatory Auphe, and one of the most horrific characterizations of a troll I have ever encountered. Not only does she use mood whiplash from comedy to horror to great effect, but Thurman also understands the most important principle of evoking horror: that true terror lies not in catalogues of gore-ridden monstrosities but in allusions and brief glimpses. She gives just enough details of the atrocities to make me wince, then merely hints at the rest, leaving my imagination to paint in the remainder in the gaudy shades of pain and terror. Overall, while it may not be a great fit for readers who tend towards only slightly hardboiled fiction, this is a fantastic read for someone who likes their noir seriously dark and gritty. show less

I was a bit underwhelmed by this one at first. Two brothers on the run from what they call Grendels, which basically are the creepiest and scariest elves I've ever read about. Cal, our main character, is half elf, which makes him valuable and is why, as a young teen, he was stolen and held captive by these creepy elves for two years.

He *somehow* escaped (he and his brother are both unable to find out how), and the two have been running and/or hiding ever since.

They are somewhat comfortably hidden in New York City - hidden, that is, until the employees at the bar where Cal works are murdered and Cal is once again actively being hunted.

Cal is an intriguing character, and the freaky twist (Cal is possessed by a male banshee who is now show more hunting Cal's brother) catapults this one into the pretty exciting category of supernatural books. Enjoy! show less

I am in love.... with this writing!!! I simply could not put this book down. Now I am a bit particular when it comes to urban fantasy and truth-to-tell had yet to read one written by a male author other than Butcher. Butcher is amazing but Thurman? Just plain awesome. I liked his characters and I loved his twists on "classic" monsters (aka trolls elves ect) and adored his sense of humor.

So if you want something a little different than your so-called butt-kicking strong female lead (which few can actually pull off imho), give this series a try.