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Title: Black Magic Woman (Quincy Morris Supernatural Investigation) Author: Justin Gustainis Rating: Not available Avg. Score: 5 Submit Comment Hits: 24

Review of Black Magic Woman (Quincy Morris Supernatural Investigation)

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Comments for Black Magic Woman (Quincy Morris Supernatural Investigation)

• Posted on 2008-07-03
  Good start to series
  
  I think that this is going to be an excellent series. It had good setup, interesting characters, and was paced well. None of the characters got short shrift either, since the POV moved around pretty consistently. I was resentful when I had to put it down during the last hundred pages or so. And parts of it scared me, which I figure Mr. Gustainis could ask for no better compliment. I'll be keeping an eye out for Mr. Gustainis's books from now on. Also, since I believe in sharing the wealth, I've already loaned my copy out.
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2008-06-30
  Super Reader
  
  A pleasant surprise, with bonus.
  
  The bonus being there is a short story included at the beginning, as an introduction to Mr. Morris. Yes, he is a descendant of the original, and there is a cool little scene 'from' Dracula showing the surviving characters learning about a child that he had. Our hero here, too, is a Texan, of rather more understated character than usual.
  
  Actual monster hunting here, the only people involved in sex with the undead or demons are really not very nice.
  
  The cover here actually shows two characters, and both their heads, Solaris having a different focus to the run of the mill urban-fantasy-for-women books being produced elsewhere. So, the picture implies a partnership.
  
  This is what you get: Morris, the 'supernatural interventionist', who is just a competent, well trained and read human, and a consulant he uses named Elizabeth Chastain. She is a white witch, and can do the fairdinkum magic stuff, as well as being his friend.
  
  The book is certainly into horror territory, with the plot being revenge tied into the execution of a woman in Salem witch times, and a family feud. A black witch is trying to destroy the family line, completely, of those who executed her ancestor. Women, children, and budgies if they had any included. The family hires Quincey to help them stop the attacks.
  
  The different bit is the hiring of an African woman to make a powerful fetish to help the black witch involved destroy her enemies. This involves some very nasty crimes.
  
  Along with the Morris and Chastain main storyline, the hunting down of the African and her partner by a South African member of their Occult Crimes squad and an FBI agent is the major subplot.
  
  This is apparently the author's second novel, and feels rather polished to me.
  
  Vampires, demons, werewolves, witches, voodoo, and more are to be found packed into this book that thankfully does not suffer from any bloat or padding whatsoever.
  
  There's a stringpuller in the background who presumably we will find out about in later books, and this one does end with a preview section from the next novel.
  
  
  
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2008-06-24
  Has promise, but characters don't connect
  
  The setup for this book is promising. Magic is all around, and somewhat like Harry Dresden, there are those who practice magic and don't deny it, but the general populace doesn't believe unless their noses are rubbed in it. The two main protagonists of the book are a savvy but non-magical PI/problem-solver, and his "white" witch sometime partner. Unfortunately, neither character was written in a way that grabbed me. If I'm supposed to care about the peril to a character, I need to care about the character in the first place. Also, if there's going to be romantic tension between two characters, I need to care enough to root for them getting together.
  
  I'm not entirely sure why I didn't bond. The writing is perfectly competent. Perhaps dual first-person viewpoints rather than third person would have helped. Also, the two main characters' storyline is diluted by a totally unnecessary parallel storyline involving a South African occult police specialist brought in to help the FBI with a serial killer. It turns out both sets of characters are after the same perps (this is not really a spoiler because it's never a mystery), but their paths cross only tangentially and the pages spent with the second team could have been much better used to build up the main characters.
  
  I think there is some potential here, but at this point it's largely unrealized.
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2008-06-01
  Interesting concepts, but no heart
  
  BLACK MAGIC WOMAN gets off to an interesting start: the prologue introduces us to the start of a feud between two families of witches, one light and the other dark. Chapter One is a self-contained short story about our hero, Quincey Morris, who saves a town from an infestation of vampires. Chapter Five introduces Quincey's Girl Friday, a white witch named Libbey Chastain who debunks fake mystics by using the real thing to catch them in the act.
  
  All the pieces are in place for a good story, but the execution doesn't quite have the, err, magic to truly captivate the reader.
  
  Let me be plain: from a technical standpoint, the story is not BADLY written. I've read other books, especially in the field of urban fantasy, that are MUCH worse. But BMW is missing that vital feeling of connection that ties us in to the protagonist and makes us feel invested in what happens to them.
  
  Most urban fantasies are written in first person, so we see the story through the eyes of the protagonist. This automatically gives us a strong connection to the character's emotions and internal thought processes, so it's an easy way to foster an investment in the character. Gustainis chose to write this story in third person, and he presents a wide variety of viewpoints: at different times we are following Quincey, Libby, and two cops who are trying to stop a string of ritual murders. We also follow the villains as they carry out their deadly work, which leads to some of the most grotesque and disturbing moments in the story.
  
  In all of this jumping around between different points of view, Gustainis never really gets very close to any of the characters. Ironically, the character who is probably hardest to connect with is the protagonist, and I think this is where Gustainis his biggest mistake. Quincey is a stoic Texan man who doesn't get shaken easily and doesn't show much of his emotions. When he first drives onto the scene in Chapter One, he's a mystery, and none of the other characters really know what to make of him. That's fine for a short story, but I didn't feel like I knew him all that better by the end of the book than I did in the beginning. Libby is more likable, but she's ultimately just a supporting cast member, and Gustainis uses a cheap literary trick to separate her from Quincey at the pivotal point in the story. Ultimately, the people who get the most interesting character development are the two child-murdering sociopaths being chased by the aforementioned cops -- a fact that gave me a distinctly queasy feeling when I finished the book.
  
  There are other flaws in the story's execution -- the characters spend too much time engaged in "As You Know, Bob"-style exposition; the two story arcs cross back and forth a couple of times but don't really tie together into a satisfying climax; the story sometimes becomes excessively, grotesquely dark; and Gustainis is prone to heavy-handed emotional manipulation of the reader, which usually comes off feeling cheap and transparent. I could forgive most or all of these failings, though, if the characters were fun, sympathetic and engaging. Sadly, while the story starts with a lot of quality ingredients, the final recipe just doesn't satisfy.
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2008-05-30
  Interesting, if flawed, beginning.
  
  Justin Gustainis, Black Magic Woman (Solaris, 2008)
  
  Gustainis (The Hades Project) pops up with a second novel, which I was quite eager to get to; The Hades Project was one of the most pleasant surprises I encountered last year. Unfortunately, Black Magic Woman doesn't quite hold up to the promise of The Hades Project, but that's mostly because Gustainis has turned his attention to a field that's already quite oversaturated right now, the urban-fantasy detective tale. Do we need another Jim Butcher or Laurell K. Hamilton? Not really. But still, Gustainis, who's now seemingly backed by a slightly larger press and a better proofreader, can't really do much wrong in my book. So I dove right in and got my feet wet. And like Hamilton or Butcher, Gustainis is going to become something of a guilty pleasure, I'm sure, but I don't feel nearly as guilty about liking Quincey Morris as I do about Anita Blake or Harry Dresden.
  
  We open with Morris heading for a small Texas town that's been infested with vampires, where we get a taste of his ability to improvise when everything goes horribly wrong. While the opening vignette has little, if anything, to do with the main plot, it does give us the sense that if anything can go wrong around Quincey Morris, it will, and that's a pretty important plot point at multiple times while he's investigating the slightly more traditional murder mystery that makes up the bulk of the book. If you've read any urban fantasy, you're pretty familiar with all the trappings you'll find here, but where Hamilton always seems to be channelling some blend of Sara Paretsky and Violet Blue, and Jim Butcher is drawing on the soul of Mickey Spillane, Gustainis has obviously set his sights higher, taking as his model Jim Thompson, or perhaps Hammett's Continental Op novels, with a dash of Bram Stoker thrown in for flavoring (yes, this Quincey Morris is related to that Quincey Morris). It's nothing new, but it's a good deal of fun, and it's a better put-together novel, from a technical standpoint, than The Hades Project was. That said, it does lack the all-around fun of Gustainis' earlier novel, and I was a bit disappointed by that-- but not disappointed enough to stop me getting the second Quincey Morris novel, Evil Ways, when it hits shelves next year. (I do wonder what Gustainis will do when he runs out of Santana hits with which to title his novels, though.) ***
  
  Score: 3