Author: Liz Williams
Cover Artist: Jon Foster
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: June 2008
The Shadow Pavilion, the fourth in the Detective Inspector Chan adventures certainly carries through with the promise of an entertaining read. DI Chen, Shanghai Three’s Police Liaison with Heaven and Hell, is after whatever group is illegally bringing in residents of Hell as cheap labor. He has two of the best working on it when they disappear. Seneschal Zhu Irzh is not only a demon but a terrific operative in his own right and was sent in with Badger, who can take care of himself. Now Chen has to find out where they’ve gone and still get to the bottom of the issue. It doesn’t help when he finds out that the newly crowned Celestial Emperor is under an attempted assassination and that a shortcutting scriptwriter has imported a Tiger demon to impersonate a movie star and that she is now on the loose and in a starlet-sized snit.
Liz Williams has created an interestingly enjoyable fantasy/scifi/adventure. This one sort of defies classification as Singapore Three is futuresque but with her addition of the realms of Hell and Heaven and all their dream- and nightmarescape denizens, the tale takes on a mythological bent that makes for fascinating reading. She has begun to flesh out some of the secondary characters more – we get to see from the perspective of Badger, a Hellish family familiar with fierce loyalties to Chen and his wife; we also get a little more perspective from the Celestial Emperor; as well as Chen’s wife Inari. As usual we have some new secondary characters, new demons, foolish humans, and the most successful assassin of all time to keep us amused.
With all due speed Williams draws us into the intrigue, imbuing our imaginations with vivid images full of color and scent that make her stories come alive. With this descriptive skill she lures us in. Then, like the sticky strands of a spider’s web, we get trapped and held by a story that is so full of life we cannot even decide what to call it. Is it futuristic police procedural? Is it an allegorical fairy tale? Near future occult? Perhaps an alternative historical fantasy? Whatever you would like to call it, I’ll just call it something I want more of. Fans of the previous three will not be disappointed.
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