The Demon and the City: Liz Williams

The Demon and the City finds Detective Inspector Chen on vacation in Hawaii and Zhu Irzh filling in his role with the Singapore Three's Police Department: revoking feng shui licenses for unpaid fees, investigating supernatural crime scenes and, when a rich girl named Deveth turns up mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable, it's Zhu who interviews the principals in the case. And when Zhu get far too close to Jhai Tersai, head of Paugeng Corporation, Chen has to cut his vacation short and bail Zhu Irzh out before he gets in too deep.

Meanwhile, Robin, Deverth's ex-girlfriend and Paugeng employee, is submitting Mhara, a demon confined within Paugeng's walls, to a slew of medical testing. But when a fit of delirium causes Robin to free Mhara, she finds herself first pursuing and then fleeing with him. But is he really a demon? And what exactly were those tests she was performing on him? The truth behind those questions will ultimately open up a conspiracy that threatens the very existence of Heaven and the stability of the worlds.

The Demon and the City is Liz Williams' second Detective Inspector Chen novel and, I must say, is a marked improvement over the first. The language is a lot more natural than Snake Agent, and she gets a much smoother flow in her storytelling. I applaud Williams for her noticeable maturation of technique in such a short period of career (literally, two books) and found The Demon and the City a more easily digested novel because of it.

However, on the downside, we have the whole uninteresting factor. I'm sorry, I just can't find the thrill in these books. If somebody told me that there was this book mixing Chinese mythology with cyberpunk and police work, but told me it was boring and uninvolving, I'd laugh in their face. But truth be told, Singapore Three needs to be renamed Yawn City. I mean, there's a war between Heaven and Hell brewing, there's a rampaging goddess being pulled around in a chariot by fiery bulls and several of the main characters are demons; how can that ever not be the best thing you've ever read in your life? Sadly, it is. Maybe it's the pacing, maybe it's the writing style, but all I know is that whatever she's doing just isn't working right. Like I said earlier, a definite improvement here, but still not hitting the bullseye.

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Publisher: Night Shade Books
Pub. Date: February 2008
ISBN-13: 9781597801119