Book Review – The Map of Moments

Author: Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
Cover Artist: Stephen Martinez
Publisher: Bantam Books
Binding: Trade paperback
Publication Date: February 2009

Barely six months after leaving New Orleans, history professor Max Corbett is returning to a place he hardly recognizes. The girl he’d loved – and lost – is dead, and the once-enchanted city has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Max has not thought much beyond Gabrielle’s funeral – until a strange old man offers him a map, and an insane propostion…

“Forget all the stories about magic you think you know….”

It looks like an ordinary tourist map, but the old man claims that it is marked with a trail of magical moments from New Orlean’s history that just might open a door to the past. But it is a journey fraught with peril as Max begins to uncover dark secrets about both his dead love and the city he never really got to know. How is Gabrielle linked to an evil group from the city’s past? And can Max evade them long enough to turn back the clock and give Gabrielle one last chance at life?

So there you have it, in a nutshell, the bare bones, back-of-the-book summation of The Map of Moments, by the writing duo of Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, both interesting and worthwhile authors to read in their own right. To write any more about the novel would be gilding the lily; but, will that stop me? No; I will gild away.

There is much to recommend The Map of Moments, and perhaps only one thing about it that is a negative – at least, it seemed so to me – but it’s a major negative, to my way of thinking. The ending of it seemed very anticlimactic and blah, to use the technical term for it. Well, there you (again) have it, my unabashed opinion, for what it may be worth. But, I’ll go into what I consider to be the good qualities of the book in somewhat more detail, before revisiting the one bad quality.

First of all, there are the many various extremely complimentary quotations from various reviewers at the front of the novel. These are standard fare; but, more often than not, despite my sometimes cynical take on life in general, they usually reflect what the person being quoted genuinely feels about the book. Therefore, I read the darn things before I read a novel, though I try not to let them bias my eventual review one way or the other. This particular novel has some quotes from such luminaries as Charles de Lint, Joe R. Lansadale, Sarah Ash, and K.J. Bishop, and the reviewers of many publications, like Publishers Weekly, SFX, Fangoria, Rendezvous, and Hellnotes have nothing but glowing comments to make.

My appetite for what was to follow, the actual book itself, was considerably whetted by these complimentary quotes, and I wanted to enjoy the book, I was put in the mood, the right frame of mind, to do like it, before I read the very first word of it – and I did like it – to an extent. Crap, I definitely give the duo their due – both of the authors are very talented, and they are renowned, and they write very good, suspenseful books and stories, individually and as a team. And, The Map of Moments, for the most part, is also a very good read, with a fair amount of action, suspense, and a healthy dose of ghosts and gruesome gore thrown in for good measure.

Another aspect I liked about the novel is that it is one of the first dark fantasy/horror novels that’s been written about a post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Besides the main human characters in it, like Max, the “strange old man,” Ray, Gabrielle, and the evil characters like Coco and Mireault, New Orleans itself is a major character in the novel. New Orleans and its history has been written about lovingly by Golden and Lebbon, and they have done lots of research into both the history of the city and into its current, post-Katrina state, how its inhabitants are dealing with the after-effects of it, and how its layout has changed forever because of the devastation Katrina wrought on the Big Easy.

Also, the evil dark magic in the novel is not the result of some ancient (nor modern) voodoo curse. Instead, it is caused by the practically immortal Frenchman Mireault, and his followers, the Tordu (“twisted” ones). It may not really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things about whether the black magic in the novel is the result of voodoo or Mireault and the Tordu, but it is a slight variation on the theme, and as such, I appreciated it quite a bit.

SUMMATION REDUX:

Corinne, a cousin of the deceased Gabrielle, discovers Gaby’s body in the attic of their aunt’s house. There are words painted on the wall: 1 Dead In Attic. They were painted by the people whose job it was to explore and investigate houses after the water receded to see if they could find any survivors or Katrina, or any more dead to add to the hurricane’s terrible body count.

Corinne, knowing that Max had loved Gaby and had a sexual relationship with her, though he was her professor at Tulane and she was just nineteen, called Max to tell him the news and invite him to the funeral. Of course, it’s a very sad time for Max, and he wonders why there are not very many people at Gaby’s funeral – most of her family, other than Corinne, have disowned her for some reason unknown to him. Besides the minister, Max, Corinne, a few church members/pall bearers, the only other person at the final internment is a mysterious white-haired gentleman in a white car – Ray, as we come to know him.

Ray strikes up a conversation with Max, Corinne drives off, leaving Max stranded, and Max and Ray go to a local bar to talk. Ray gives Max a glimmer of hope, telling him there may be a way to warn Gabrielle about her fate, to go back in time to when she was still alive, and talk to her. All he has to do it take a magical map of crucial moments or turning points in the history of New Orleans, go to the places mentioned, relive the moments, and with each moment, he would pick up magic as if it was static electricity. Once he gathers enough, and has experienced all of the Moments, he would become charged up enough to potentially change the course of history and save Gabrielle’s life.

Max starts out as being a passive observer of the Moments, but as he goes from viewing one to another, some of the people – the ghosts and Tordu in the Moments – notice him more and more. The Moments get progressively more violent and filled with the dark magic of Mireault and the Tordu.

Mireault has created boundaries, or wards, around New Orleans to prevent a swamp demon called Sedecus (who followed him from France over two hundred years ago) from entering the city and claiming his soul, and the souls of his followers. He, Coco, and other Tordu control the crime in New Orleans, the prostitution and the drugs; but, they are really after the souls of the people of New Orleans. Ray is the only one who might know how to prevent Mireault’s plans from coming to full fruition; but, since he is getting old and doesn’t want to engage in the kind of human sacrifice and cannibalism that has unnaturally lengthened Mireault’s life and those of the other Tordu, he wants Gabrielle to be his successor. That’s why he’s helping Max out, really, more than from a genuine concern for Max’s wishes.

Max’s experiencing the often bloody and violent Moments are, to me, the best parts of the book. The Moments range from the first one, a ritual sacrifice by drowning of a baby by an Indian (the baby is miraculously rescued by four birds) to nuns hanging themselves and jumping off of roofs to the horrors New Orleans experienced during the heights of the Yellow Fever, which claimed thousands of lives. The Tordu’s sacrificing victims and disembowling of them, and the cannibalism the ensues, make the book quite gory in places and increase the suspense, as we as readers can’t help to think what they might do to Max if they catch him. Max has to both experience the Moments and try to evade the Tordu, who are hot on his trail.

Now, the one negative – the ending. I won’t reveal what happens, with the exception of saying that, after the massive violence that proceeds it, the conclusion is void of violence, and Max leaves New Orleans after having completed his role in the drama. Yes, many books conclude in this manner,more or less, and rather than amping up the degree of violence and suspense, authors ease it down. To me, however, this sort of an ending is kind of a let down. I was thinking that, hey, this is a pretty cool book so far, and the ending will probably rock, but it fizzled out. The Map of Moments is a decent, often suspenseful and fun read; I don’t know, maybe most people, like the quoted reviewers at the beginning of the novel, won’t care about the ending of it as much as myself. I would recommend it, because most of the book is pretty good, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because of the ending.

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