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Book Review: HAND OF CHAOS by J Hamlet #Giveaway
If you met Anna Wei in a Washington, D.C., bar, you might take her for a hipster. Mid-20’s, bit of a drinker, but attractively mysterious with her mixed Asian heritage, tats, and piercings. You might scratch your head when she told you she worked for the Treasury Dept as an analyst, but what the heck, everybody needs to make a living.
But there’s more, so much more, to our friend Anna. In fact, she’s a mage on the front lines of a supernatural war. Welcome to Hand of Chaos, the dark urban fantasy by J. Hamlet.
Let me make something clear: when Mr. Hamlet describes his writing as “dark,” that might be a teensy bit of an understatement. Hand of Chaos opens with a ghoulish infection that’s taken over a Crystal City apartment building. For the first twenty pages or so, we’re immersed in hand-to-hand combat between Anna and her partner as they fight through the ghouls to capture Zombie Patient Zero.
But it’s worse than that. Even while they’re fighting the forces of darkness, they’re also on the clock before the “Churchies” (aka Knights Templar) arrive and “cleanse” the entire building–along with everyone inside, living, dead, or undead.
Mr. Hamlet has put a lot of thought into his alternate world where the alphabet soup of government organizations, such as CIA, NSA, DIA, have “arcane” branches. The arcane deals with threats from Heaven, Hell and all the shades of gray that occupy the space in between. Anna and her colleagues work for a “gray” organization, one that stays away from the extremes of the good vs. evil continuum, making alliances as necessary to get the job done. Think bureaucratic turf wars on a metaphysical level.
In addition to Anna, the author uses the evil-doer, Ethan, as a second point of view character. For all the evil this guy does–and he does A LOT of bad stuff–Hamlet succeeds in making Ethan a sympathetic character, just a little guy fighting against the system (in this case Heaven).
If I have one critique of Hand of Chaos it’s just the sheer scope of information that Hamlet is laying down on me, the reader. In one chapter, we are introduced to bonelings, ghouls, revenants, <keep up people!> draughirs, bone kings and pit lords. A slightly less lengthy list of good guys is summoned to battle the baddies and each side uses a dizzying array of spells with really cool names like Lash of Mictlan, Crypt Touch and Monk’s Hood. I can picture this author’s corkboard above his desk, and I’m not sure I want to visit…
But he makes it all work. If you’re a fan of the TV series Supernatural and sprawling good vs. evil novels like Gaiman's American Gods, you will enjoy Hand of Chaos.
David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. Check out his website for a free sample of his work.