Thursday, January 4, 2018

Shriek and Finch

Shriek and Finch are not an obscure comedy troupe from the 40's.That's good because they sound like they would be awful. No, Shriek is book two and Finch is book three in the City of Saints and Madmen trilogy. There are plenty of creatures and monsters in these books but the scariest of all might be the monster of exposition in Shriek. He will bore you to death!

Shriek is written memoir style with the narrator and her brother who makes post script annotations. But if I wanted to deal with two snarky siblings making passive aggressive comments to each other I could just go to Thanksgiving. Granted they went through a lot of more drama than my family. I did have a brother that went though a eat your own spit phase. You know where you lay on the edge of a table and spit, it makes a long string then you suck it back up? Yeah, but we are all in agreement that he is weird as hell.

Finch is written in the style of detective novel. Very noir style. There are some exciting fun fantasy scenes in both books but the first book, City of Saints and Madmen is far superior. You'd be fine with just reading that book. I just struggled a little with these two.

In this series there is city built on the ruins of a civilization of well, I'll just say it...mushroom people. There is some debate on whether they still live underground....(they do, that's not a spoiler). I think I have some in my basement. What I think is weird is while mushroom people sound funky and maybe a little scary but to me, defeating them could be a squirt-gun full of bleach. Barring that, I would just kick 'em. Hey scary dude, what to you think if I just drop kick your head? Ba-dang. Sounds like a comedy from the 40's. They could be little Nazi mushroom people. I'm picturing little tiny jackets.

These speculative fiction fantasy novels just scream absinthe to me. Also, this one has a spooky name which is also appropriate. Death in the Afternoon: Pour 1 & 1/2 ounces absinthe into a champagne flute. Top with 4-6 ounces of champagne.  It should form this milky cloud which sounds freaky!  (I've seen variations of this cocktail with Pernod and also an addition of a sugar cube). 

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