The Barrow Will Send What It May is the second book in Margaret
Killjoy’s Danielle Cain series. For me,
it has the same strengths and the same weaknesses as the first book. I’m about to spoil everything in the book, so
read on at your own caution.
I really love the way Killjoy approaches the fantastic in these
novels. Her joining of small-town American
life to supernatural has a flavor and look that is all its own, and that quality
of freshness is not to be underrated. Part
of that uniqueness is the limited scope of the story told. Here we have a necromancer who is raising the
dead for a very specific and personal reason, and his plans affect two
households in the whole town. There is
nothing earth-shattering going on here, and I like that restraint. Similarly, Killjoy uses the tradition in
detective fiction of the detective who encounters a pre-existing tangle of
relationships and then has to navigate and untangle them to lay bare what is
happening, if not solve it. Crossing
that detective fiction with supernatural investigation is a wonderful idea.
I admire Killjoy’s determination to create a pro-anarchy book with
characters everywhere in the gender, sexuality, and romance spectrums. She creates a world in which all these
differences coexist matter-of-factly, and that’s just cool.
Finally, I like the thematic content of the book, the contrast of possessive
and generous love. Sebastian’s love for
Gertrude is selfishness that disguises itself as generosity. Vasilis has to face the fact that he too is
powered by a selfish love for Heather and needs to confront that head on before
he can progress. Danielle’s sleepless
night of jealousy over Brynn and Heather’s conversations is the point on contrast,
in which she has to realize that her jealousy is about herself, not Brynn. Thursday helps her come to this realization,
so not all dudes are bad. Thursday is of
course held up for criticism when he is part of the dude-collective bringing
firearms into one of the climactic scenes instead of contributing to the de-escalation
effort that Danielle lead. That’s when
Brynn delivers the dismissive line: “Cis men.”
The politics of the book are front and center, and I enjoy that. I also admire that Killjoy seeks to model
good and open communication between characters, but it can read a little
didactic at times. When Danielle is
talking to Isola in the library, she is careful to note that she doesn’t tread
on Isola’s feelings: “I didn’t say any of that to Isola, though. Because . . . me even pretending to
understand where she was coming from?
That was bullshit. I didn’t know
shit about shit. I’d never been
kidnapped and murdered.” She is, of
course, absolutely right, and were that the only occurrence of such an
exchange, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Many of the conversations, though, show this
kind of thoughtfulness. I know I should
be celebrating its existence, but something about it has the faint odor of
after-school-specialness to it, to which I find myself reacting negatively.
And that leads me to the observation that there are some bad lines of dialogue
in the book. When there is a standoff in
front of Sebastian’s gift shop, Danielle says to him that he doesn’t want to
shoot Vasilis, and he responds “I don’t even know what I want anymore.” Oof. I
read the entirety of the book aloud to my wife, so I was aware of every klunker. That line, there is no good way to deliver it
out loud so that it sounds believable.
Most lines of dialogue in the book are of course inoffensive, but there
are very few that are noteworthy.
I like that cast of characters that Killjoy has assembled, but she doesn’t
have a great way to handle all the characters in the team. My complaint at the end of the last book was
that we didn’t know anything of real meaning about anyone other than Danielle,
and that doesn’t really change here.
Part of the limitation is that this is a first-person narrative, so we
never get into the heads of anyone else, which raises the question: why is this
a first-person narrative? In detective
literature, the first-person is necessary to limit the reader’s knowledge so
that they can discover things with the detective. In other literature, the first-person is
necessary for the reader to be able to call into question what they are being
told, which obviously doesn’t apply here.
In the first book, the first-person narrator made sense, since it was
really about her discovering this world.
Now that we are a Scooby gang of five in their mystery van, it feels
like the narrative naturally wants to broaden.
We didn’t learn anything new about Danielle in this book, and we didn’t
learn anything about anyone else.
Finally, I’m not stoked about the magic feds. Actually, I’m not stoked about the
construction of magic in this world.
Apparently you can just pick up a book and do your thing. Everyone learns from books, and they can
apparently learn fast. Doomsday has
become something of an expert in short order.
It’s unclear what the magic draws on or what it costs. I suppose both the magic feds and the shape
of magic will be developed in later books, but I’m not seeing the groundwork or
suggestions here.
I wish Killjoy and Cain the best in the books to come. Unless something amazing happens, I think
this will be the last book in the series I read. The book was okay, but who has time for books
that are just okay?
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