brigid | Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

Hold me closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride is the first book in a series. Intelligently (and humorously) written, with a well-developed world and paranormal structure, it’s one of those books That Could Have Been Better… but is good enough as is that its shortfalls are pretty painful.

Sam (Samhain) Corvus LaCroix is a college dropout loser working fastfood with his best friend, Ramon and pals Brooke and Frank. What Sam doesn’t realize until a fateful game of potato hockey in the restaurant’s parking lot is that he’s also a Necromancer, someone who was born with the ability to talk to/raise/command/etc the dead. Also: his mom’s a witch, as in, she literally has magical abilities. And his nozzle of a dad who abandoned their family to start a new franchise in a much nicer part of town did so because of their supernatural abilities. And some dude named Douglas who’s a total badass wants to either train him, or kill. Or both!

Douglas kicks off Sam’s adventure by decapitating then reanimating Brooke, and sending her to Sam as a message.

And that’s part of the problem I have with this book.

Sam’s surrounded by totally awesome, powerful, confident, attractive women. His mom (the witch), his sister (maybe a witch, too), Brooke (who is smart and hot and athletic and is murdered to send him a message), Brid who is a powerful werewolf and next in line to lead her Pack, his next door neighbor (also a witch). These women are smart and capable and foxy and are secondary characters because… why? Conversely, why couldn’t Sam be female? There are a lot of super awesome writers who pull this shit (Lois McMaster Bujold and the Vorkosigan books and Scott Lynch and the Gentleman Bastard books I AM LOOKING AT YOU SO HARD RIGHT NOW) and it’s depressing. Because it sends a very clear message that it doesn’t matter how totally awesome a ladyperson is, she is fit only to be a secondary character and prop up a loser of a dude who can’t pass Bio101.

Years ago, I was in Band and I played the Cornet which is kind of like a Trumpet but different somehow (the tubing is shaped slightly differently, I think). I was unrelentingly awful at it, and eventually quit because I hit a plateau and just did not improve (being partially deaf in one ear did not help). Anyway, at one point early in my musical journey, my teacher kept piling on more and more specific complaints about my playing, and I got frustrated. And he said, the reason I’m complaining is that you’re getting better, so instead of one huge wall of wrong things we can pick out the individual things that are wrong. So although it SEEMS like I’m finding a million things wrong with your playing and that’s a bad thing… it’s actually good, because there’s enough that you’re doing right that the wrong things are standing out.

And I kept thinking about that while reading this book, because there’s stuff in this book I really liked. The action was quick paced, the Council and supernatural world feel fleshed out, Douglas was a good villain. The way Necromancy works in this world, and what it is, is well thought out. McBride manages to make the setting (PNW) real for me, someone who grew up in the midwest and lives in Chicago. The dialog is snappy. It wasn’t very predictable. It’s the first book in a series and I will probably check out the next book, something I wouldn’t do if I disliked a book.

I like Sam. I like the secondary female characters. It’s nice to see so many kick ass ladies tromping about. But at the end of the day, the people who are the focus of the book and the saviors are all male. And I’m just really tired of that.

Mirrored from Thoughtful Consumption.