Author: John Meaney
Cover Artist: Steve Stone
Publisher: Bantam
Binding: Paperback
Published: January 2009
The city of Tristopolis (loosely modeled after New York City), powered by the bones of the dead, much as we utilize nuclear power, is the setting for John Meaney’s Bone Song. The year is 6604, and the planet is unspecified, though it might be the Earth. It is Earth-like, at least in many ways, and humans live there, but they share the world with supernatural beings like wraiths, death wolves, and zombies. The rain is liquid mercury, so protective clothing has to be worn when one is outside, but the clothing seems to look no different from ours – it’s just made from different (also unspecified) material. The days are twenty-five hours long, and the weeks last nine days. “Death,” is used often in expressions, and “Thanatos” (a death wish) seems to be used as a swear word. The main hero or the novel is Donal Riordan (he hates it when people call him “Donald”), and his job is to protect a famous opera diva – the beautiful Maria daLivnova – from becoming the latest victim of a killer or killers who like to collect the bones of brilliant and talented people.
As is fairly apparent by the title, bones, death, and how the living character relate to these are major themes in Bone Song. I’m not sure how bones are supposed to be a viable energy source, and though mention is made of bone piles, as if they are synonymous in the alternative dimension or wherever it is that that the action takes place. I’m guessing that one is not supposed to dwell too much on this, but that it’s meant to be a given. Malfax Cortindo, the Director of the Downtown Core Complex of the Energy Authority, puts it to Donal like this:
“It takes the bones of two thousand corpses,” he said, “to form the critical mass for a single pile. What we’re talking about is a resonant cavity, where standing waves of necroflux vibrate and strengthen, giving off a plethora of harmonics.”
If that explanation doesn’t clear things up, I don’t know what will. Putting aside the question of whether bones as an energy source could be a plausible energy source in this particular world and reality, The book is a pretty entertaining and suspenseful read, combining elements of dark fantasy (like the flamewraiths and other types of wraiths that are enslaved to power people’s cars, elevators, etc.), the mystery genre (Donal is a cop who is helping to catch whoever is behind the deaths of famous celebrities), and science fiction (flying cars, cool weapons, some Matrix-like effects, etc.). Donal Riordan is a tough, likable guy, who you can imagine your choice of personalities to play him in a movie of the novel, if one is ever made – like Vin Diesel or Nicholas Cage, maybe.
With the use of coined word such as the above “necroflux,” and others using the prefix “necro,” for death or the dead, you can imagine that the attitudes of people towards death are different from ours. Much of their architecture involves the use of skull shapes, the Ouroboros worm that swallows its own tail, and other arcane death-related imagery. The inhabitants of Tristopolis know full well that their houses, apartments, office buildings, etc., are supplied with electricity created from the bones of the dead, and it’s an accepted part of their – uh – lives.
Protecting the diva is, as Donal finds out, easier said than done. That’s because of several reasons, like the clamoring of her many fans to want to see her, the routes she takes to travel, and the possibility that an assassin could try to attack her during any of her scheduled performances. Also, since she might be vulnerable at the Exemplar Hotel she’s staying at, Donal has his men stationed in the rooms above and below and to either side of hers. Maria is as talented as she is beautiful, and she is able to elicit tears from even the hardened Lieutenant Donal and his men with her wrenching perfomances.
Ultimately, despite his best efforts at protecting the diva, Donal fails, and she is shot in the head. During one of her perfomances, an attempt is made on daLivnova’s life, and he can do nothing to prevent it, because the very audience there to watch her perfom are her attackers, ensorcerelled by a spell placed on them by either Malfax Cortindo or some other member of the Black Circle (a criminal organization which he belongs to, who use black magic to accomplish their goals):
Ensorcelled, the hundred people advanced, blankness in their eyes. The music died and the diva’s voice trailed away. she stood paralyzed not by a spell but by fear.
This was what had happened in the other theaters. Some part of Donal’s captured mind realized that every report and article he had read in preparation had been a lie. Any power great enough to ensorcell a hundred people in public had enough capability to alter the memories of everyone here.
Donal manages to prevent daLivnova from being killed at the theater, but anyone who sees her in the streets as they attempt to escape also are ensorcerelled and try to kill her. He takes her through catacombs and tunnels to avoid, as much as possible, the possibility that anyone can see her and fall under the spell. This lead them right into the hands of Cortindo and his henchmen, however. Donal kills Cortindo, but not before Cortindo shoots the diva in her forehead, killing her.
After her death, Donal takes the diva’s body to a secret piece of property he has inherited. His mind has been effected by the magic, and he desires to possess her bones for himself. He’s about to begin de-fleshing her body, when someone breaks through the protective measures he’s set up. No living being should have been able to do this – but, no living being does.
The lady who breaks through the wards designed to stop anyone from disturbing the grisly task Donal is about to undertake is Commander Laura Steele, and she is a zombie. She’s not your run-of-the-mill, stereotypical, ponderously slow-moving, brain-hungry, partially decomposed zombie, though. She’s a extremely attractive, blonde-haired, lithe and muscular one, and she saves Donal, basically, from himself – from the terrible act he was about to do.
Laura recruits Donal to her own force, and, after he recovers from being ensorcerelled, he joins her in her efforts to destroy the Black Circle. She is quite wealthy, and, when Donal discovers that his old apartment has been rented to someone else when he was hospitalized and recovering, he turns to her for help. She lets hims stay with her in the Darksan Towers, on the 277th. floor, which she owns.
What does the title of the novel refer to? Earlier in the book, when Donal first meets Cortindo, the Director has him touch the ulna bone of an obscure artist – Jamix Holandson – whose works have gone up considerably since his death, when Cortindo infromed the world about his genuine artistic genius, through the information he got from the man’s bones. Three hours pass for Donal without him realizing it. It seems like mere minutes to him. He experiences a sort of psychedelic, hallucinary trip, seeing in his mind landscapes of different colors, seeing reality as the artist had seen and painted it. Even after Cortindo removes the bone from Donal’s hands, the cop imagines the bone talks to him, calls to him, sings to him.
Unless one’s bones join the bone piles used to light and power Tristopolis, it seems like death is never the end of one’s existence in Bone Song. Who knows? You could become a wraith, a zombie, or perhaps be raised from the dead, as happens with Malfax Cortindo later in the novel, by the Black Circle. This scene, which Donal witnesses, is one of the coolest ones (of many pretty cool ones) in the book:
It was the corpse of Malfax Cortindo.
While all around…
Sweet Thanatos, no.
…lay the pale discarded detritus of the components they had used up in their work, the power source that had fueled whatever strange hex they had cast and shaped. It was almost an anticlimax when the corpse’s eyelids twitched, because it had to be worth it, even for the perverted mages of the Black Circle, worth it to have used up the resources the had.
The floor was littered with dozens of dead children, their eyes open, never to see anything again.
Powerful stuff, potent writing indeed. Bone Song reminded me somewhat of Brian Lumley’s book Necroscope, as both have in them people who communicate with the dead through the bones of the dead. It’s the first book of a series, which is good news, if you happen to like this one – which I obviously did. The next one is going to be called Black Blood, and is scheduled to be published in March 2009. If you like your fantasy with a strong supernatural flavor, then I’d highly recommend that you check out Bong Song by John Meaney.
