Author: S.M. Peters
Published By: Roc Books
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: May 2009
Shades of Neil Gaiman! S.M Peters’ newest dark fantasy book out this month in paperback, Ghost Ocean, strongly reminded me of Gaiman’s book American Gods. I haven’t, I confess, yet read Peters’ first book, Whitechapel Gods, but it’s received high critical acclaim and I imagine it may be evn more similar to Gaiman’s American Gods. I mean by similar: Awesome, Kick-Ass, Steampunk, Tim-Powers-On-Acid Good Fun For All!
Twenty-two-year-old Te Evangeline lives in the dark, rainy town of St. Ives. She is employed by the paranormal investigator Babu Cherian, who has trained her to be very skeptical during their investigations, and to question everything, and try to think up plausible alternative reasons for so-called paranormal phenomena. Te’s father, Robert, had also worked for Babu, until he died mysteriously five years previously.
Little does Te know that Babu, far from being a skeptic, is working for a man called The Man in the Empty Chair to keep strange monsters and powers from a place called the Old Country at bay, and that St. Ives, and cities like it, are types of prisons for these powers. Babu made a promise to Robert to take care of Te, watch over her, and not tell her about their true mission–to capture any monsters or powers that, every once in awhile, escape; or, if necessary, to kill them.
One of these creatures is Bird, an intelligent reptile/bird being who eats body parts it considers beautiful, sort of like the monster does in the movie Jeepers Creepers. Te and her teenage friend, Jack, encounter Bird in a local park in an aviary. It is, on a map, a small park; however, it is a product of Bird’s mind, and once inside, it seems immense. It contains mazes, horse-drawn carriages, and teens who have been drawn inexorbably to the park. They are compelled to do Bird’s bidding, to wear archaic clothes and talk with English accents. An entry in a case book Te has stolen from Babu, describing the park and what some other team members think about it, states:
Profile Entry: Park. Area of circular logic (Munin’s term). Disorientation Manifest (Robert’s term). “Cursed hole of madness” (King’s term). Bird’s influence suspected – environmental shaping documented by external teams. Attempted mapping Apr. 15, 1993, without success (see map attempt, attached). Eight hours lost in gardens. Heard horses’ hooves much of the time. Followed sound out.
A gentleman called Corwinder Martin takes Te and Jack to the cage, actually luring them to her, so she can attack them. Bird can use pheromones and hypnotism to get people close to her, and then she compliment them on their eyes, their heads, their hearts, their hands, etc., and she eats whatever part of that person she tells them is beautiful, getting the person to “freely” agree to give that part of her/him to Bird. She grabs Jack, digs her claws into his eye sockets, and almost takes his eyes out, but Te manages to stop Bird before she succeeds.
Bird is just one of many monsters and powers from the Old Country that Te has to face. Babu eventually tells her more and more of the past, of what happened to her father, and Te learns a lot on her own, and through her mother and her aunts, who are–unbeknownst to Te–also powerful beings from the Old Country, who have taken human forms. Awakening to her true nature and coming to a decision about whether she should continue helping Babu or aid Yun Kitsune (a very powerful granter of wishes from the Old Country who can assume the shape of a nine-tailed fox) to free countless other monsters, is a crucial element of the novel.
Just as Robert had been a Binder, helping to Bind and capture the monsters, Babu uses Te to do the same thing, himself not knowing that Te has powers of her own that she has inherited from her mother. She is the same type of creature as many of those Babu and his team, including her father, Robert, is entrusted to capture and imprison.
Babu asks another member of his team, the Tarot-card reading, witch-like albino woman Angrel, to train Te to be a Binder. Angrel flips over card after card, giving Te a reading that is highly accurate of her past, and this process causes Te to undergo visions and to learn from them how to be a Binder. She discovers that Angrel and her father had had an affair, that Angrel is also a “power” and has been a witch, a goddess, a priestess, in thousands of past lives. Angrel seems to have truly loved Robert, but she also aided in killing him.
The story of how Te waks up to who she really is, learns of her past, and works with Babu and other team members like Lester–a vampire–and Munin, whose weapon against the evil forces is a toy ray gun (hey, it works)–is very compelling, much like Bird’s hypnotic powers over people. But, what I liked most about the novel is its many references to literature, especially T.S. Eliot’s “The Wateland,” and “The Hollow Men,” and the book The Golden Bough. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer.
Tarot cards and their interpretations plays a major role in both Ghost Ocean and Eliot’s The Wasteland. As Angrel has one blank card in her deck, so does Madame Sosostris of Eliot’s famous poem:
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.
Besides their both utilizing Tarot cards and their interpretations, Ghost Ocean also has a chapter titled after an entire part of The Wasteland, titled “The Fire Sermon,” referring to Buddha’s sermon of the same title. There’s also a chapter called “What the Thunder Said,” another part of Eliot’s poem, and one named “We Are the Hollow Men.” And, referring to Frazer’s work, there’s a chapter entitled “Orpheus,” and the last chapter is called “The Golden Bough.”
What’s more, and best, is that all of these references seem to be a very natural and welcome addition to the novel, and to a greater understanding of it. They don’t, in other words, detract from the story; they add to its enjoyment.
I have a couple of bones to pick about the novel, though on the whole, I consider it to be a msterpiece of its kind, and I really like the homages it pays to other works of literature. I didn’t especially care for the cover on the paperback version I read, as I think it is a kind of generic one, and shouts out something like: “Let’s show the heroine on the cover with a mysterious look in her eyes, as if she possess an important secret!”
Also, the title of the novel, to me, is not perhaps the best one that could have been chosen, and is not one I would consider to be particularly eye-catching at, say, the local bookstore or when one is perusing a web site like this one. It doesn’t come close to hinting at what an excellent story is enclosed within its pages, which to me is a sad thing, because I believe literature like Ghost Ocean ought to reach as wide of an audience as possible. If you like extremely cool dark fantasy novels that are action-packed, full of monsters, demons, ghosts, and other assorted creatures of the night, and ones not afraid to appeal to the readers’ minds as well as their pulse rates and adrenal glands, you owe it to yourself to check out S.M. Peters’ Ghost Ocean. You’ll be glad you did!
