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A review by mackenzi
Splintered by Jamie Schultz
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Awesome. A nice tall glass of cold water after a long drought.
It's been years since I read book 1, but I finally tracked down a used copy of this one (doesn't seem to be in many book stores I visit, thank you library sale) and I blazed through it in just a couple days.
This series is SO RAD. I am not into much popular fantasy and modern magic series- any book with a "magic system" can feel offputting to me. Too formulaic and ordered and clean. This shit Jamie Schultz is writing, on the other hand, is dank. The occult is something scraped over cement in sharpie over graffiti, it's cutting off your fingers, it's something that could immolate you if you write a sigil wrong, it's half made up in any given moment and it's always bad news. Even the demons can't force it, have to follow rules even they don't know, and it's messy. Oh boy is it messy- there is so much rotting meat, thinning skin, and blood in these pages it's kinda crazy. Not to mention the setting; Los Angeles, California. Somewhere warm, sunny, urban/city sprawl. Way too many people. Too many cars. It's just fucking nice to not be in some faux-European setting, or faux-New York for that matter. What a breath of fresh air.
Book one, Premonitions, had Karyn as the main POV character. Her confusing, gloopy, shadowy visions of the future slowly overwhelming her gave the impression of watching this all play out on a black and white television. It was bleak and mysterious, and primarily focused on the heist, the thrill of a con. Splintered is a slightly different flavor of horror. It has Anna, dedicated best friend and determined professional thief, as the primary POV character, and Anna can see much more clearly- and now the bright sun of L.A. seems to shine over everything, from the piles of dead locusts to the aforementioned chopped off fingers, all of the rotting bodies, the abandoned architecture, the trails of blood, the Twilight Zone eerie suburbs. Splintered leans less in the heist direction and harder into horror- the soaked in red kind. There are whole chapters of blood and slime and chunks, and it's delightful. Both books were cool, and I hope the next book offers another slightly new perspective.
The main characters are still just as interesting. I have a lot of respect for this series giving us some lesbians (or at least wlw) as primary characters, and for how many women are in these books period. Characters in the "Arcane Underworld" series are all sorts of shades of grey, but in a believable, needs-driven way that is a lot more nuanced than the usual "theif with a heart of gold" type characters who seem to be dicks for no reason. Everyone has their own motivations, which are less "good and evil" and more "what are my needs, and what am I willing to do to others to achieve them, and how bad do I feel about it after the fact." And from every side and every faction there are women. Cult leaders, cult followers, burglars, kidnappers, FBI, practicing occultists, murderers, ones who do violence and ones who avoid it and ones who care about others and ones who don't. Women who have romantic ambitions and women who have other ambitions, some women who have no ambitions. You might say this book passes the Bedchel test several times over, and honestly, it's fucking refreshing. Just letting women exist in this crazy world shouldn't be such a notable thing, but once you notice how little that happens in media in general, you really start to crave it. And this book delivers!
Anyway, if you like heist/crime thrillers where you root for the criminals, or where every character is a criminal, and you like the setting to be somewhat horrifying, and you want something different than a lot of the more popular dark urban fantasy series out there, I recommend this series very highly. A great one for any avid genre fiction reader.
It's been years since I read book 1, but I finally tracked down a used copy of this one (doesn't seem to be in many book stores I visit, thank you library sale) and I blazed through it in just a couple days.
This series is SO RAD. I am not into much popular fantasy and modern magic series- any book with a "magic system" can feel offputting to me. Too formulaic and ordered and clean. This shit Jamie Schultz is writing, on the other hand, is dank. The occult is something scraped over cement in sharpie over graffiti, it's cutting off your fingers, it's something that could immolate you if you write a sigil wrong, it's half made up in any given moment and it's always bad news. Even the demons can't force it, have to follow rules even they don't know, and it's messy. Oh boy is it messy- there is so much rotting meat, thinning skin, and blood in these pages it's kinda crazy. Not to mention the setting; Los Angeles, California. Somewhere warm, sunny, urban/city sprawl. Way too many people. Too many cars. It's just fucking nice to not be in some faux-European setting, or faux-New York for that matter. What a breath of fresh air.
Book one, Premonitions, had Karyn as the main POV character. Her confusing, gloopy, shadowy visions of the future slowly overwhelming her gave the impression of watching this all play out on a black and white television. It was bleak and mysterious, and primarily focused on the heist, the thrill of a con. Splintered is a slightly different flavor of horror. It has Anna, dedicated best friend and determined professional thief, as the primary POV character, and Anna can see much more clearly- and now the bright sun of L.A. seems to shine over everything, from the piles of dead locusts to the aforementioned chopped off fingers, all of the rotting bodies, the abandoned architecture, the trails of blood, the Twilight Zone eerie suburbs. Splintered leans less in the heist direction and harder into horror- the soaked in red kind. There are whole chapters of blood and slime and chunks, and it's delightful. Both books were cool, and I hope the next book offers another slightly new perspective.
The main characters are still just as interesting. I have a lot of respect for this series giving us some lesbians (or at least wlw) as primary characters, and for how many women are in these books period. Characters in the "Arcane Underworld" series are all sorts of shades of grey, but in a believable, needs-driven way that is a lot more nuanced than the usual "theif with a heart of gold" type characters who seem to be dicks for no reason. Everyone has their own motivations, which are less "good and evil" and more "what are my needs, and what am I willing to do to others to achieve them, and how bad do I feel about it after the fact." And from every side and every faction there are women. Cult leaders, cult followers, burglars, kidnappers, FBI, practicing occultists, murderers, ones who do violence and ones who avoid it and ones who care about others and ones who don't. Women who have romantic ambitions and women who have other ambitions, some women who have no ambitions. You might say this book passes the Bedchel test several times over, and honestly, it's fucking refreshing. Just letting women exist in this crazy world shouldn't be such a notable thing, but once you notice how little that happens in media in general, you really start to crave it. And this book delivers!
Anyway, if you like heist/crime thrillers where you root for the criminals, or where every character is a criminal, and you like the setting to be somewhat horrifying, and you want something different than a lot of the more popular dark urban fantasy series out there, I recommend this series very highly. A great one for any avid genre fiction reader.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Injury/Injury detail