'Sacrificial Magic' Downside #4 by Stacia Kane

From the BLURB:


When Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss—who also happens to be her drug dealer—to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic, she knows she must rise to the challenge. Adding to the intensity: Chess’s boyfriend, Terrible, doesn’t trust her, and Lex, the son of a rival crime lord, is trying to reignite the sparks between him and Chess.

Plus there’s the little matter of Chess’s real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead—and if Chess doesn’t watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.

As Chess is drawn into a shadowy world of twisted secrets and dark violence, it soon becomes clear that she’s not going to emerge from its depths without making the ultimate sacrifice.

** This review contains SPOILERS for previous ‘Downside’ books **

For a little while there, Cesaria ‘Chess’ Putnam thought she had it all. After hurting him with the worst kind of betrayal, Chess and Downside thug, Terrible, are together and happier than ever. And despite their awkward break-up, Chess and Slobag’s son, Lex, are remaining friends (without the benefits). Her work for the church has just bought Chess a new couch, and for the first time in a long time she feels fulfilled in nearly all aspects of her life.
So it comes as no surprise to Chess that fate chooses this moment to start unraveling her existence.


First, a burned and sacrificed body turns up on Bump’s side of town. Chess and Terrible are trying to keep their relationship on the hush, but that doesn’t mean she can turn Bump down when he tells her to be a good witch and jump into investigating this murder . . . not to mention, Chess is still reliant on Bump for her pills and hits.


At the same time as Chess is ordered by Bump to investigate a suspicious Downside murder, a Church employee goes missing while on a job and Elder Griffin gives the left-overs to Chess. Elder Griffin also drops a bombshell that he’s hoping to be advanced in the Church; effectively leaving Chess behind.


But when Chess arrives at the scene of a haunting, Mercy Lewis Second School, she is confronted by antagonistic staff and silent students. Even more, Mercy Lewis is on Lex’s side of town . . .  and he insists on ‘popping round’ to keep an eye on his old Tulip.
Suddenly Chess’s perfect world starts unraveling and colliding; sacrificed bodies start mounting and old doubts creep into Chess’s mind. . .


‘Sacrificial Magic’ is the fourth book in Stacia Kane’s phenomenal ‘Downside’ urban fantasy series.


It has been far too long since fans last traveled to ‘Downside’. Third book, ‘City of Ghosts’, came out in 2010, and it has been a looooooong wait for this much-anticipated fourth book. However, Kane did leave Chess on a high-note in ‘City of Ghosts’, when she cemented her relationship with Terrible after the hurdle of having slept with Lex.


‘Sacrificial Magic’ picks up pretty much where ‘City’ left off, give or take a few months. Chess and Terrible appear to still be in the ‘honeymoon’ period of their courtship – spending nights at each other’s apartments, sneaking kisses on the street (to keep their romance on the down-low) and, for Chess at least, basking in the fact that they managed to overcome so much distrust and dishonesty (and near-death!) to be together;

Seeing him was like being hit in the chest. Like something exploding inside her, a quick ravenous fire that made her shiver. So bright and so hot it still amazed her that no one else seemed to notice it, that every eye in the place didn’t turn to her while she went incandescent.

So, of course lady fate chooses this moment for things to start going horribly wrong in Chess’s world.


In quick succession she finds herself embroiled in a murder mystery with Bump – when a member of his crew is found to have been burnt and sacrificed in a warehouse fire (suspected to have been started by Lex’s father and rival Downside king, Slobag). Soon after, Chess is put on a Church-sanctioned case, tying up the loose ends of a case in which the Church investigator went missing (and hasn’t been heard from since). This case takes Chess to a secondary school on Lex’s side of town, and throws the two of them together again. . .  much to Terrible’s chagrin.


As Chess starts investigating the ghost of a girl who killed herself on the Mercy Lewis school grounds years ago (the outcome of a tragic love affair between a student and teacher) Chess finds herself ducking near-misses as this vengeful ghost gains power.


I had my heart in my throat throughout a lot of this book. I am a huge Chess fangirl, even while knowing that she is the quintessential anti-hero. I know Chess is screwed up, and a product of her own self-sabotage. She’s an addict with no wish to kick her habits – but I love her anyway. I have written about this at length. . .  and because I know that Chess is her own worst enemy, I felt very on-edge during the beginning of this book. I knew that, as deceptively sweet as Chess and Terrible’s lovey-dovey relationship was, it had to come crashing down at some point. And it does. . . hard.


It’s not just that Lex happens to be thrown back into Chess’s path, creating tension between her and Terrible. It was more the fact that in this book, Chess starts to really pay attention to the imbalance in her relationship with Terrible. Chess may be a junkie, but she’s a smart woman regardless . . .  and she knows that a relationship in which she’s the addict, and Terrible is her supplier’s lackey, there is going to be an imbalance.


On the plus side, Chess recognizing the power Terrible potentially has over her and her addiction is really the first instance of Chess hating her habit. I know that Chess’s path to recovery and getting clean (if it ever happens) will be a long, rocky one. But her realizing that imbalance and resenting it, is really the first step in the right direction.


With Terrible, it’s once again Chess’s self-hatred and self-sabotage that makes the biggest dent in their relationship. I actually really liked reading all of Chess’s self-doubting narration, because it managed to reveal the roots of her terror . . .  at one point, Chess remembers all those foster ‘daddies’ who used and abused her, and a foster brother who beat her – so badly that sometimes her foster mother would give her drugs for the pain. This is one of the biggest “aha!” moments in Kane unravelling Chess’s horrible history, and it’s a doozey of a revelation. All these little teasing ties and hints are wonderful storytelling on Kane’s behalf, as readers slowly piece together Chess’s history leading to this point in time. Aptly-named, Chess is a puzzle of a protagonist, and I’m enjoying putting her pieces together.

But the words in her head were a reminder, one she didn’t need. A reminder that she was failing, that she was fucking up, that it wasn’t a question of when she would spoil everything but of how long he would put up with the way she was spoiling everything. They made her feel as if she was standing on a railing above the city, balancing there with nothing to hold on to, and if she lost her balance she’d fall off.
And she’d never stop falling.

The murder-mystery in ‘Sacrificial Magic’ is another cat and mouse whodunit, peppered with enough red herrings and curveballs to keep the reader guessing. An interesting addition to the cast in this book is a part-time worker at the Mercy Lewis School, a woman called Beulah who takes an instant dislike to Chess (and for good reason). I won’t give anything away about this character’s presence, but I get the impression she’s going to play a big part in Chess’s world from here on in, and I look forward to it.


‘Sacrificial Magic’ was absolutely worth the year-long wait. Stacia Kane delivers on all fronts – in Chess and Terrible goodness, new players on the Downside scene, revelations about Chess’s past and towards the end she delivers a game-change that is off the Richter scale! I was so pleased to learn that the fifth ‘Downside’ book won’t be as long a wait – with a tentative June 2012 release date. It was bloody good to revisit Downside and Chess again, with this fourth book Ms Kane is definitely cementing herself as an urban fantasy tour-de-force.


5/5

Fan Letter Blog Crawl: Dear Stacia Kane . . .

Dear Stacia Kane,

I didn’t stumble across you. You weren’t a diamond in the ruff or a reading happenstance. The truth is you and Chess Putnam were creating a furor. There was a buzz in the blogosphere, GoodReads loved you and Amazon recommended you. Even people I know who are strict Biographical/Historical/Crime readers were telling me to give this Stacia Kane chick a read.

So I did. And I didn’t get it.

Your book was fast. There were ghosts attacking and jive-speaking thugs swapping drugs to a church-going heroine. Truth be told, ‘Unholy Ghosts’ had me stumped. I didn’t know what all the hype was about; I could barely decode the dialogue let alone get excited about these supposedly ‘brilliant’ books. So I threw in the towel after a couple of chapters. I put the book down and walked away.

I almost gave up, Ms Kane.

But the buzz kept buzzing and I eventually gave up and gave in. I decided to valiantly soldier on and read more. And I can tell you exactly when you hooked me for good and forever.

Chapter three, Chess and Terrible taking a ride in his car;

Terrible shrugged again.

“Not real verbal, are you, Terrible?”

This time he glared at her, the greenish lights from the dash highlighting the astonishing ugliness of his profile. His crooked nose – it must have been broken several times – the way his brows jutted out like a cliff over the ocean, the set of his jaw. She held her hands up, palms out. “Okay. Just making conversation.”

“Dames always wanna talk.”

“Not like there’s anything else they’d want to do with you.”

Terrible reached forward and turned up the radio. The Misfits blared from the speakers, singing about skulls. It somehow suited the moment.

- Book One ‘City of Ghosts’

That moment changed everything for me. Chess’s antagonism was palpable, and Terrible was conjured as a Neanderthal-looking Elvis impersonator. But something just clicked. I couldn’t even put my finger on it at the time – but from that moment in I was engrossed.

Chess was unlike any heroine I had ever read. Between her addiction to Cepts, her duel church-working/drug-taking personality and the different faces she showed to the world – Tulip to Lex, Chessiebomb to Terrible – without showing anyone her real core, fucked-up self.

I had always claimed to revel in the ambiguous and prefer characters made up of dubious shades of gray. But that was a lie. Until ‘Downside’ I had never really read an anti-hero I liked. I had always read waiting for redemption, and my liking came with a price – the assumption that the author would turn the character around and make them inherently good.

Cesaria Putnam is different. I like her now, just the way she is. I like the fact that she’s scared of everyone finding her out and realizing the extent of her addiction. I like that she doesn’t let anyone close, because history tells her it can only lead to hurt. Heck, I even like that she’s out for herself and nobody else. I like her because she’s flawed, recklessly so. Chess is an addict who doesn’t know how to help herself . . . and I like her, regardless of her flaws (not because of them).

I like Chess because I know that reading her path to some semblance of redemption will be hard. It won’t come with the love of a good man (heck, her beaus are thugs and muscle-men). It won’t come with some light-bulb-moment acceptance of a past trauma (she was abused as a child, that’s the truth not an excuse). It won’t come easily, this amalgamation of a happily-ever-after. Chess will have to fight for it, and fight herself for it. You will, undoubtedly, make readers work for it too, and I am fully prepared to grit my teeth and shed tears.

I know all this because you, Ms Kane, write tough. You write raw, gritty, messed-up characters living imperfect lives between a rock and a hard place. You write in-your-face and dangerous. You have given readers an anti-heroine to care about. You’ve paired her with thugs and bad-guys and given her as many self-imposed hurdles as external ones. There’s no yardstick for her redemption, and there’s no happily-ever-after on the horizon.

But there’s just something there, beneath the surface and on the tip of my tongue. It’s like in that car with Chess and Terrible – when there was open hostility with a current of something hot running below the snide remarks. It’s there in Chess fighting the ghosts and bringing Terrible back from the dead. It’s Chess admitting she’s scared shitless, but loving Terrible anyway. It’s the fact that Chess is fucked-up beyond belief, but I love her and so do plenty of other people. Because, despite it all, she’s one cool chickie who has a lot of people (and readers) in her corner, even if she doesn’t know why she’s worth backing.

Everything about your series is gloriously unique, off-center and bold. Your genre is a mish-mash of urban fantasy/rockabilly. Your characters speak in jive to reveal their station in life. Your heroine is a hot mess and your love interest is fairly fugly. And I can’t believe I nearly missed out on all the fun just because I was too impatient to appreciate it. My bad. Because your series has fast become an all-time favorite, and I am counting down the months until March 27th 2012 when Chess’s story continues in ‘Sacrificial Magic’. . . because, damn Mama!, you rocked my reading world, ya dig?

Yours very truly,

Danielle

'Chess Putnam / Downside' series by Stacia KANE

The world changed after Haunted Week. Ghosts walked amongst the living; they attacked and killed and in the aftermath only one thing was certain... religion had lied. There was no God, no Allah, Buddah or the Prophet... there was only truth and fact, and the Church.

The Church of Real Truth reject all types of religion and hold only one surety; “Facts are Truth”. Armed with that credo, The Church defeated the ghosts, captured and banished them and bought the world back to order.

Now, in the years following Haunted Week, the Church is the world’s governing body. They investigate supposed hauntings; sending ‘Debunkers’ to banish ghosts, and prosecute those people who fake hauntings in order to receive compensation from the Church.

Cesaria ‘Chess’ Putnam is a Debunker (ghost hunter) for the Church. Chess was an orphan, used and abused by the Foster Care System, until the Church tested her magical ability and recruited her as a Debunker. Now at the age of 24 Chess is a devoted disciple of the Church; she hunts ghosts and exposes fraudulent hauntings and is one of the best Debunkers in history. But Chess doesn’t exactly adhere to all of the Church’s protocols. Chess is an addict. She smokes, swallows, injects and snorts anything she can get her hands on... Cepts are her drug of choice, and Bump is the drug supplier for her Downside neighbourhood. Everything Chess does is designed to fuel her drug habit... her work for the Church is nothing more than a supplement to her drugs. So when Bump - pimp/drug-boss extraordinaire – insists that Chess help him out with a ghost problem she can’t exactly refuse.

Downside is her neighbourhood and Bump runs Downside. Bump supplies her drugs, and Chess needs her high. So what Bump wants, Bump gets...

The series follows Chess during three ghost-related problems in Downside that see her at Bump’s beck and call.

Dialogue, dig?

I will say it took me a while to get into this book. For the first couple of chapters I was worried that I’d be the one book blogger who didn’t ‘get’ this series or understand all the fuss.

My main hurdle was the dialogue. Kane has given her ‘Downside’ characters very unusual vernacular that I struggled to get my head around. Her characters talk in old rockabilly slang (dig?) but with an old-world bent (aye/thou). So you’ll occasionally stumble across rhetoric like this;

“Benefit. Slipknot set up on yon fuckin field, yay? Terrible chatter me what you needing, on the earlier. All ready your fuckin thing, get done, we straight.”

- Book One, ‘Unholy Ghosts’

In the beginning I really struggled with the syntax, and some quotes I had to read a few times just to make sure I understood what was being said. It reminded me a little of L.A. Banks’s ‘Vampire Huntress Legend’ for the very distinct dialogue.
But once I got into the groove of the jargon and used to the rhythm I started to really admire what Kane has accomplished with her dialogue.
For one thing, the dialogue is an indicator of status in the novel. Only the Downside (and therefore poor/shady underworld) characters speak in this old-world street slang. The second a character opens their mouth to speak, you have an immediate idea about their social status.
It’s a really clever technique that Kane uses to instantly orientate readers, and also imbue her world with flavour and distinct sound. I really started to enjoy the dialogue toward the end, especially when, in my head, I kept hearing the jive-talk spoken in Lafayette’s voice (from ‘True Blood’). I struggled with the dialogue in the beginning, but by ‘City of Ghosts’ I was well and truly digging the rhythm and felt the need to answer affirmatives with ‘aye?’.

Going down to Downside

Kane’s world visually reminded me of the 2006 movie ‘Pulse’, in which ghosts start to kill people through electronics:

And the old-school 1979 classic ‘The Warriors’, for the ghettoized gang-ruled streets.

Downside is a nasty little ghetto that really puts the ‘urban’ into ‘urban fantasy’. Kane’s series is primarily set in the grungy little Triumph City and the wrong-side of the tracks where Chess lives. Downside is an interesting setting, purely for its corruption and Kane’s detailed imagining. Kane wonderfully visualizes the setting; from the seaside outskirts to the interconnecting tunnels that run below the city. At times, Downside also reflects Chess’s mood and psyche, making the city and ghetto characters unto themselves.

Messy Love

I've got to give Kane some serious kudos for offering up a very different romance in her series. Chess’s love triangle is with two thugs whose bosses respectively run Downside and control the drug business. Lex is right-hand-man to Slobag, while Terrible is muscle-man for Bump.... when Chess finds herself working for Bump, she attracts the interest of the other Downside head-honcho (Slobag) and his runner, Lex. Terrible and Lex are her ‘handlers’ on behalf of Bump and Slobag... and over the course of 3 books they become so much more.

The romance in this series is in no way redemptive. It’s not a case of a white knight riding in and saving Chess from herself and giving her a happily ever after... Chess’s romantic triangle is definitely a case of ‘rock and a hard place’. Neither Terrible nor Lex are conventional romantic leads.

Terrible was not my idea of a romantic lead... He’s described as having an overhanging brow, enormous mutton chops and a broken nose... not to mention his beating on kids when Bump orders it. I initially wrinkled my nose at him – but right around the same time Chess finds herself begrudgingly attracted to him, I was also warming to Terrible. Kane does a wonderful job at slowly revealing Terrible’s character and exposing his underbelly.

I did love the triangle between Lex/Chess/Terrible, but it’s not a traditional love triangle. Lex was never a real candidate for Chess’s affections. It was always about Chess and Terrible. Adding Lex into the mix was more a case of upping the stakes – emotionally and plot-wise.

The main reason the triangle worked was that it put Chess in an uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous, situation. Whereas in most novels the creation of a love triangle is purely to raise the romantic stakes, in the case of ‘Downside’ Chess’s romantic predicament meant her life was on the line and the tension was ratcheted up a notch. Not only was Chess’s life in danger, being caught between the affections of two thug muscle-men, but the triangle served as a coming collision course for Terrible and Chess’s relationship... I loved all the tension and impending doom – it was frustrating to read at times, but the romance and romantic repercussions kept me on-edge throughout the series.

Chessiebomb

Chess is one complicated chickie. She grew up in orphanages until the age of 14 when The Church recognized her witchy talent and recruited her. But in those interim childhood years Chess was used and abused, made sexual slave to some shady characters. The sexual abuse she suffered as a child has a huge impact on her and has shaped her adult life. Chess trusts no one, she doesn’t want to let anyone close to her, she doesn’t want to be of interest to anyone and she doesn’t believe in attachments of any kind.

Chess lied to herself every day; it was just something she did, like taking her pills or making sure she had a pen in her bag. Little lies, mostly. Insignificant. Of course there were big ones there, too, like telling herself that she was more than just a junkie who got lucky enough to possess a talent not everyone had. That she was alone by choice and that she was not terrified of other people because they couldn’t be trusted, because they carried filth in their minds and pain in their hands and they would smear both all over her given half the chance.

- Book Three, ‘City of Ghosts’

Chess is a true addict; all she wants out of life is the freedom to lose herself in her drug of choice. It seems that everything Chess does is just a means to getting drugs. Her work for the Church funds her drug habit. Her work for Bump ensures she has a ready supplier of drugs. Getting involved with Lex and Slobag means she has an alternative drug supply. And one of the reasons she doesn’t want to be in a relationship is because it would be too hard to hide the extent of her habit from a significant other.

Chess isn’t looking to be saved. She doesn’t do a lot of naval-gazing or self examination of herself or her drug habit. It just is.
This is a very real portrayal of an addict... she doesn’t want to be ‘cured’, she just wants to get by, get her drugs and not get caught. Chess’s self-destruction can be frustrating and sad to read, but I loved exploring her very fucked-up and damaged character – she is such a different heroine than I have ever read before and I adored her (even when she frustrated and angered me), I was always rooting for her.

As a reader I accepted Chess’s drug habit, but never approved of it. Kane is in no way glamorizing drugs or addiction by writing an addict as her leading lady... If anything, Kane is shining a harsh and unflattering light on the ways that drugs rule and dictate Chess’s life. And even though I found it interesting to have such a flawed protagonist, throughout the books I was hoping that Chess would kick her addiction. I was waiting for a catastrophe to kick Chess in the butt and propel her to get clean.
But the ‘Downside’ series isn’t that easy. I think there is definitely room for Chess to save herself and kick her addiction.... but it won’t be an easy road for her to travel, and there’s no way Kane could have written her sobriety in three books.

Ghostbusters...

I will admit that a lot of the technical ‘ghost catching’ was over my head. When Chess starts mentioning psychopomps, Lamaru, menstrual blood, bird wings for rituals... a lot of it was lost on me. Each book has a mystery plot at its centre, propelling the storyline... but a lot of the finer details were lost on me because they’re so dependent on the intricacies of Kane’s universe. But that’s fine. I always got the big picture in the end – I was able to see the forest for the trees. At times the Debunking/Church jargon did irritate... especially when I just wanted to focus on the Terrible/Chess situation.

I may not have 100% understood all of the minute details of this post-Haunted world, but I trusted Kane enough to propel the story forward, regardless of intricate plot-points. Kane does drama/action very well, heightened by all of the emotional stakes she constantly touches on, and I was never so lost that I was bored. That was probably my one, small complaint, and it’s less to do with Kane’s writing and more to do with my ability to grasp this vast Urban Fantasy world she’s created.

Good things come in 3’s...

I’m really, really glad that I read these books back-to-back. I don’t know how I would have gone waiting a month between book #2 and #3.

‘Downside’ is a dark urban fantasy... bordering on gothic. Kane’s protagonist is a drug-addled addict who is living drug by drug, day by day. Her romantic leads are thugs and muscle-men... and her home is the grimy ghetto of Downside. This Urban Fantasy is not always a comfortable read; but the darkness is part of the allure, and sets the series apart from any other Urban Fantasy out at the moment. I love, love, loved these books and I’m happy to say that I finally *get* what all the fuss is about. I dig, aye?

More Downside to come...

I am thrilled beyond belief to read that Ms. Kane has more Downside books planned. She is contracted for at least 2 more in the series. Book #4 will probably be released in Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 for Book #5. That is a long wait, but I know it will be worth it.

5/5