Midnight in New Promise, by Lon Prater
Written: Dec 11 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Prater makes New Promise seem like a real place.
Cons: I wanted to see more of the town, the story was over too quick.
The Bottom Line: First in a series, I believe, so if this one leaves you wanting more, more is on the way.
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| cdm72's Full Review: Midnight in New Promise Books |
There's this thing in genre fiction called "The Formula". In romance it's "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back in the end". In a lot of horror fiction, the small town boy returns home from years away and discovers some evil in his town. In the end, the small town boy wins. In fantasy, there's a sub-genre, to which Lon Prater's novella Midnight in New Promise belongs which deals almost exclusively in political backstabbing in the grimy little port city. You can see this political formula at work in stories like the Star Wars series, Frank Herbert's classic Dune, and even the Lord of the Rings trilogy has a lot to do with the politics of that world. Nothing new, but the fans of these genres don't want something new. In fact, some trailblazing authors deviate from this formula at their own risk.
Lon Prater's New Promise is a dirty city, both physically and figuratively, full of "humans, elves, orcs, ogres, gnomes and their goblin relations, dwarves--any race touched by the Undying Spark of Awareness." The only crime "punishable by exile from the province"? God worship. But the pagan religions flourish anyway, underground, in old buildings, away from the light of the law. To survive, a lot of these factions align themselves with the local crime families, making them very powerful in town.
In New Promise, people do what they can to survive. Greivien deals in dirt, the kind the people of New Promise want kept quiet. "He unearths secrets and sells them to the highest bidder". But one night he comes across a plot that could upset the balance in New Promise.
Like I said, it's a formula. It's got its predictable moments, it ends exactly like you think it will, but the journey to get there is well-done. Prater never strays too far from the narrative, and his world seems pretty fully-realized--another staple of this type of fantasy is a fully-developed world.
Prater paints a filthy picture of New Promise, full of grime and shadows. I feel like I need a shower just reading about the place. He obviously knows his genre well, the characters are all what someone familiar with this sub-set has come to expect; the corrupt politicians, the bartender who knows everything, the private eye (or, in Greivien's case, "private ear") who stumbles across the plot and takes the opportunity to prove he's more than just another body in town. It's a formula. But it works. And in Prater's very capable hands, I can see the story of New Promise continuing for a very long time. It seems like the perfect place to explore all the misdeeds and prejudices people meet on one another. Lotta skeletons in the closets of New Promise, I imagine, and I'm curious to see which one comes out next.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cdm72
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Location: St. Joseph, MO, USA
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That's me in front of Trent Reznor's house in NOLA several years ago.
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