Jared Cleaves has problems. Excluded from the army by a couple of bum fingers, Jared contributes to WWII-era Detroit’s war effort by building golems in a secret Ford factory, removing scrap metal from lumps of clay that are then brought to life by a no-nonsense rabbi. Not only that, but his wife makes more money than he does, his mother-in-law hates him, and he’s haunted by dreams of a red-skinned dwarf instigating Detroit’s fall.
Such is the world of THE NARROWS by Alexander C. Irvine. It is a world in which magic is unusual but by no means unreal and the supernatural doesn’t preclude the daily grind.
THE NARROWS’ tight focus is not so much on the magical but the mundane. Everyday hopes and fears take equal precedence to mysterious visions and cloak-and-dagger hijinks. Irvine sets the reader firmly in Jared’s shoes as he tries to navigate the rapids jostling his life, and does so admirably. As Jared slowly begins to see, powerlessness is powerful in itself, and sometimes you get more control over your life by going with the flow.
Irvine’s novel also succeeds as a fantastic alternate history. As all sides of the war try to harness the powers of magic for their own ends, Irvine imagines some doozies: Nazi frost giants smashing up Michigan’s upper peninsula, metamorph Japanese spies, a secret government bureau focused on the supernatural and, of course, the silent, powerful golems.
But this book isn’t about action. The bulk of the violence happens offstage to be commented on rather than experienced. This is a book about personal responsibility and relationships; the not-quite-everyman Jared Cleaves learns that while spying on Nazi provacateurs is tough, it pales in comparison to keeping a family together.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
He seems to like playing with alternate history. Check out “A Scattering of Jades.”
Both “Scattering” and “One King, One Soldier” are worth checking out, and they are in the same vein. But, while magic exists openly in “The Narrows,” the previous two books are more of the “Hidden history” type, and actual historical figures are characters. The absolute best example of this subgenre is “Last Call” by Tim Powers.