Rob Thurman

Cal Leandros — (2006-2012) Publisher: In New York, there's a troll under the Brooklyn Bridge, a boggle in Central Park, and a beautiful vampire in a penthouse on the Upper East Side. Of course, most humans are oblivious to this, but Cal Leandros is only half-human. His father's dark lineage is the stuff of nightmares-and he and his entire otherworldly race are after Cal. He and his half-brother Niko have managed to stay a step ahead for three years, but now Cal's dad has found them again. And Cal is about to learn why they want him, why they've always wanted him...

Nightlife

I'm the first person to admit that I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasy. Don't ask me why — I doubt I could really explain it. It ought to be right up my alley, but for some reason it isn't. But I guess my psyche or subconscious or whatever you'd like to call it is pregnant, because lately I've had a craving for the stuff. Nightlife (the first of Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros series) was pretty well-received, so it seemed like a decent place to start. Besides, I figured, I enjoy the occasional Dresden Files book, perhaps I'd like the male take on the genre better.

Joke's on me there, as Rob Thurman is actually Robyn Thurman. Very much not a dude. But outside of some curiosity as to why (it's not exactly a genre where a bit of gender ambiguity can help a career), I didn't really care. As long as the book was good, I'd be happy.

In an attempt to relate the positive stuff first, I'll begin with the things I did like about Nightlife. Even though he's a whiny little emo teenager, Cal is honest about being a whiny little emo teenager. He doesn't try to pretend he's something he's not, so I kind of liked the guy, even if he was urban fantasy's answer to Holden Caulfield. Be they a mite (okay, a lot) stereotypical, his supporting cast has its charm too. There's some moments of good tension here and there and the troll is downright creepy and disturbing. And occasionally the book comes out with a funny.

Okay, I'm not having sparkling success here. There were a few things I liked about Nightlife, but mostly I was just unimpressed. Reading Cal's thoughts is a bit like reading a paranormal LiveJournal. There's way too much rambling and paragraphs get far too long. Quick, someone get Stacia Kane's editor, we need some chopping going on here. Also, some serious rearranging would be nice. Too many sentences are awkward, convoluted, and sometimes just plain backwards. And oh, the purple prose! Some of it was so florid that I wrote down a handful of my 'favorites', because I just couldn't resist sharing:

• Always unfailingly prompt, she swept out the door, cloaked in silence as shimmering as her silk shawl.
• I gave a silent wince at her arch tone, the needle-sharp point of a stiletto coated in warm honey.
• It took me a moment to realize that was a venomous version of a snake's wistful sigh.
• Crumpled and decaying rose petals masquerading as lips smiled back at me.

Oww, my head. Not only are they purple, but the structure of a couple of them just doesn't make any sense. I shouldn't feel like I'm reading the first original work of someone who's been writing fanfiction for years, but I do.

As for that supporting cast I mentioned? Like I said, they have a bit of charm, but they also call up great amounts of WTF. For example Cal's brother Niko is supposedly very smart and has an extensive vocabulary. But every time he's teased about the 'big words' he uses, I look over what he just said and think "Come on, not everyone in this world can be so dumb that they'd need a dictionary for THOSE words." In fact, Cal's 'voice' uses more big, obscure words than Niko ever does, and those only pop up rarely. And if you're going to have a character that has supposedly been around a long time and even met Homer, you're never going to get your readers to suspend disbelief if said character doesn't know that Homer wasn't one man! Come on, Ms. Thurman, you're writing urban fantasy, a genre where history and mythology come alive. Study some, please.

I don't want to have to go on in this vein — I really don't — but I'm going to have to address the plot. What little there is of it. Not only is it threadbare, but it's derivative too. I'm not surprised by any of it. I don't really care much, either. And just when Nightlife reaches a point when it by all rights should get more interesting (which I can't explain without a spoiler) it just becomes more of a paranormal LiveJournal than ever.

On the bright side, never once while reading did I think "This is what I can't stand about urban fantasy." No, no, Nightlife gave me plenty of its own special, unique qualities to dislike. I for one won't be taking another trip back to Rob Thurman's world. —Beth Johnson

Nightlife: I didn't enjoy it.

Set in modern day with a sprinkling of different mythical/fantastic creatures, Nightlife introduces a boy who was born from a human and demon cross. Exactly why this has happened and what the consequences will be consumes the majority of the story.

The main character, Cal, is a cynical, self-absorbed, boring twit. I didn't like him and his older brother is so noble and self-righteous that he is not believable. The idea for the story is fine, but I didn't like any of the characters, so basically I didn't like Nightlife. I need a character who I can identify with, or at least sympathize with, and Rob Thurman gave me nothing to work with.

Nightlife just wasn't up to the standards that I have come to critique this genre against. —John Hulet

Madhouse

Madhouse is one of those novels that you think has potential when you look at it, but just doesn’t quite meet your expectations. Rob Thurman's writing style is easy to read and pleasant on the eyes and mind, but unfortunately, this third book about Cal and Nik Leandros is not well-plotted and suffers from an excess of innuendo.

The story is basic: Cal and Nik run a sort of supernatural detective agency in NYC. Nik is a ninja and Cal is a half monster/half human strong-arm. Together they are a pretty powerful pair. When a murderer from the past is reconstituted and begins his murderous rampage anew, they are hired to hunt him down and kill him (he isn’t human, although humans once thought he was). In the meantime, their friend the puck, Robin Goodfellow, is being hunted for a crime he committed nearly 8,000 years ago. Nik and Cal must save their friend and destroy the monster before they end up dead themselves.

Madhouse is mostly action sequences punctuated by introspections from Cal Leandros (the story is told entirely from his point of view). Cal suffers as he does his best to be a good person and avoid becoming the monster his genetics says he is. Unfortunately, most of his angst is over events that occurred in the first two books, and while Thurman is able to relate the events that lead to the angst, she fails to re-build the requisite emotional aura. In essence, readers know why Cal Leandros suffers so, but don’t emotionally connect with him in his troubles.

The plot moves quickly. Thurman’s fight scenes are rousing and she is especially good at bringing the reader from a quick laugh down into the depths of despair — like a roller coaster ride. In a way, Madhouse is a strange mixture of The Silence of the Lambs and the Tom Hanks Dragnet movie: It is both funny and deeply disturbing. That makes Madhouse unique, as does Thurman’s attempt to make the supernatural monsters different from their commonly accepted versions. Zombies are a naturally-occurring species, not dead people come back to life, and other angels don’t exist, but a form of life that looks like them does. Hell is just another dimension, not a supernatural place, but it does have its monsters. This scientific take on the existence of monsters is unusual, and I applaud Thurman for that.

But Madhouse is entertaining only if you are the type who goes to movies to watch the fight sequences. Thurman is not attempting to write the next great novel, but even as escapism it failed for me as a reader. For one thing, Thurman never really explains how the monster underworld manages to stay undetected from the human world around it, especially since so many bodies end up lying around. This may have been addressed in the first two books, but it was not in Madhouse.

For another, the plot was overly simple and I got tired of the fight scenes being pretty much the same action with different characters. There is little actual mystery in the story, although it is marketed as a mystery. The villain is known from the start, and other than Cal Leandros’ internal musings, the rest of the plot is fight scenes and characters teasing one another.

Finally, I did not enjoy the crude humor of Robin Goodfellow (there are only so many times an author can make the same joke before it gets tiresome) and there was rampant cursing and swearing, which makes sense for the life that Nik and Cal live, but which could have been less common and still been as realistic.

I thought Madhouse was merely okay. It is funny in parts, and it has lots of action, but the repetitiveness of the fights, the plot holes, and the need to have read the previous novels (the first of which is reviewed above) makes Madhouse a novel that I don’t recommend reading. —John O.
FanLit thanks John Ottinger III from Grasping for the Wind for contributing this guest review.