Review: Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older (Bone Street Rumba #1)
Title: Half Resurrection Blues
Author: Daniel José Older
Series: Bone Street Rumba #1 (Link to #2)
Publication Date: January 6, 2015
Review Date: December 30, 2022
Rating: 2.75/5 ⭐️
This is among the better attempts at doing a real noir urban fantasy story I’ve seen recently, and you can tell it didn’t go over all that well in the urban fantasy community because I’ve seen a lot of complaints that center on the noir aspects. That being said, it’s not 100% successful.
First, the pluses. The story is very grounded in Brooklyn and the city feels very well realized — this lives up to the idea that urban fantasy should feature a “city as a character”. The main character, Carlos Delacruz, is “half-dead”, a kind of revenant who works for the New York Council of the Dead as detective and enforcer along with a ghost partner, Riley. Together they try to keep the worlds of the living and the dead separate. Carlos mostly does this by knifing ghosts and other spookies with a blade that permanently kills them.
Carlos is sort of a compelling character surrounded by much more interesting side characters. He is a bit like Leonard from Memento—he doesn’t remember anything from before he died and he honestly is not all that interested in finding out. He is a crotchety, capable grump who’s just trying to do his job and really inhabits the noir detective role. Should he question the Council of the Dead more than he seems to have? Absolutely. But his general air of ambivalence make for a fairly consistent characterization.
We also have Kia, the Black teenaged girl who manages the bontanicá Carlos frequents, who is a total firecracker (and I hope we see more of in future books). Mama Esther, the larger-than-life ghost who acts as a central librarian for many of the dead (and nearly-dead) of Brooklyn. Sasha, the love interest, who is also half-dead and whose brother Carlos killed in the opening moments of the book (yikes).
And then the ngks, a truly wild invention by Older: maniacal goblin/troll/creatures who spin exercise bike-like machines, show up when evil is afoot, and generally don’t care about anything going on in the world unless you mess with them and then dozens of them will literally tear you apart.
Check out this gloriously over-the-top illustration from the book:
The plot is a genuine mystery that has to be unraveled. Carlos doesn’t get everything he wants at the end of the day and, honestly, he doesn’t deserve it. Chapters are incredibly short/fast paced (if that does something for you).
Now, the minuses. Sasha (the love interest) is fairly thinly drawn and falls into bed with Carlos crazy fast, which escalated to “I love you” even faster. The sex scene and general romantic prose is a bit cringey (which is hard to disentangle from Carlos’s POV and Older’s writing itself). And the resolution to the Sasha plot is buck wild, and not really in a good way.
The mystery is also not all that interesting, unfortunately. Which is fine because the narrative also doesn’t find it all that interesting either, and tends to wander all over the place. This is a common characteristic in noir storytelling—splitting the plot up into somewhat disconnected vignettes—but it just wasn’t that successful here. Important side characters don’t show up frequently enough to make a lasting impression, despite their importance to the end game (I’m thinking of Kia specifically). Generally, it’s a muddle.
Overall, a decent start to a series, but doesn’t totally nail it. The world and characters are interesting enough that I will definitely continue, though. If you’re looking for good noir storytelling in an urban fantasy world, it’s worth checking out.