Bookburners: Season One
Oct. 28th, 2016 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylLooking for something a bit different, I've spent the last week reading the first season Bookburners, a Serialbox story about a group of Vatican investigators who deal with outbreaks of magic. The story is fashioned from a set of episodes, intended to mirror the form of a television series, which mix an overarching plot with a weekly one, with the writing team taking it turns to helm an episode.
The series begins when Sally Brooks' brother Perry pitches up, unexpectedly, on her doorstep late one evening. Sal, a detective with NYPD, doesn't exactly approve of her brother's semi-legal interests and his obsession with obscure manuscripts, but when a group of people arrive hot on her brother's heels and start issuing threats, Sal is determined to protect her brother. The group — Perry calls them Bookburners — blow through Sal's apartment like a hurricane but don't manage to prevent Perry from escaping.
Determine to find out what is going on, Sal recognises the Bookburners' van and forcibly introduces herself. The leader of the group, Father Arturo Menchu, tries to explain that Sal's brother has become involved with a demon trapped in a book and that he and his team — including Grace Chen, an deeply intense, one woman wrecking crew; and Liam a troubled, tattooed, reformed hacker — are trying to save him. Sal is sceptical, right up until she finds Perry's friends acting as though they were hypnotised and sees her brother transform into something else entirely. Only partially able to resolve the case, the first episode concludes with Sal reluctantly agreeing to move to Rome to join the Bookburners team.
As the season unfolds, we come to know a little more about the main characters and the things in their pasts that drew them into their current roles. We also meet Asanti, the team's archivist and notional head, whose interest in the more practical aspects of magic put her at odds with Father Menchu and, most especially, with Liam, whose past experiences have left him extremely wary of anything supernatural.
We also discover that Sal's team isn't unique and the Vatican actually fields three groups against the occult. The first is composed of group of elite soldiers who, beefed up with various supernatural artefacts, are occasionally brought in to sterilise outbreaks which can't otherwise be contained. The second are more diplomatic and, under the notional leadership of Hilary Sansone, apply the necessary PR to smooth over the consequences of the other teams' behaviours, although some of the members appear to be scarily zealous and seem to believe the ends justify the means. Sal's group compose the third team, tasked with investigating outbreaks of magic and/or demonic activity and bring them back under control. The was, once, a fourth team who specialised in the research of and practical applications of magic, but they were disbanded ago and their members excommunicated, although the precise circumstances for this remain obscure.
The overarching story of the series involves the recovery of demonic books and a mysterious billionaire called Mr Norse who seems willing to go to huge lengths to recover occult artefacts. Unfolding in parallel to this, Sal becomes increasingly concerned with the fate of her brother, whom she discovers has been infected by a demon called The Hand, and begins to wonder about the involvement of a man who calls himself Aaron and who seems to know far more than he should about everything.
Bookburners is an extremely effective series whose pacing is never feels less than perfect. The premise, which takes something from Warehouse 13 and something from every story ever to feature the Vatican as gatekeepers of ancient knowledge, works extremely well, largely because it takes its initial ideas seriously and doesn't use the archive as a trivial source of dei ex machina. The world building is excellent and the setting feels deep and detailed, with episodes like The Market Arcanum revealing an extra dimension of the magical world that has nothing to do with the Bookburners or their mission but which exists in an uneasy truce with it. None of this is terribly surprising given the calibre of the writers involved — Max Gladstone, Brian Francis Slattery, Mur Lafferty, Margaret Dunlap — but it needs to be said.
Highly recommended, especially if you're after something where each individual element comes in a small package but which builds up into an impressive whole.
The series begins when Sally Brooks' brother Perry pitches up, unexpectedly, on her doorstep late one evening. Sal, a detective with NYPD, doesn't exactly approve of her brother's semi-legal interests and his obsession with obscure manuscripts, but when a group of people arrive hot on her brother's heels and start issuing threats, Sal is determined to protect her brother. The group — Perry calls them Bookburners — blow through Sal's apartment like a hurricane but don't manage to prevent Perry from escaping.
Determine to find out what is going on, Sal recognises the Bookburners' van and forcibly introduces herself. The leader of the group, Father Arturo Menchu, tries to explain that Sal's brother has become involved with a demon trapped in a book and that he and his team — including Grace Chen, an deeply intense, one woman wrecking crew; and Liam a troubled, tattooed, reformed hacker — are trying to save him. Sal is sceptical, right up until she finds Perry's friends acting as though they were hypnotised and sees her brother transform into something else entirely. Only partially able to resolve the case, the first episode concludes with Sal reluctantly agreeing to move to Rome to join the Bookburners team.
As the season unfolds, we come to know a little more about the main characters and the things in their pasts that drew them into their current roles. We also meet Asanti, the team's archivist and notional head, whose interest in the more practical aspects of magic put her at odds with Father Menchu and, most especially, with Liam, whose past experiences have left him extremely wary of anything supernatural.
We also discover that Sal's team isn't unique and the Vatican actually fields three groups against the occult. The first is composed of group of elite soldiers who, beefed up with various supernatural artefacts, are occasionally brought in to sterilise outbreaks which can't otherwise be contained. The second are more diplomatic and, under the notional leadership of Hilary Sansone, apply the necessary PR to smooth over the consequences of the other teams' behaviours, although some of the members appear to be scarily zealous and seem to believe the ends justify the means. Sal's group compose the third team, tasked with investigating outbreaks of magic and/or demonic activity and bring them back under control. The was, once, a fourth team who specialised in the research of and practical applications of magic, but they were disbanded ago and their members excommunicated, although the precise circumstances for this remain obscure.
The overarching story of the series involves the recovery of demonic books and a mysterious billionaire called Mr Norse who seems willing to go to huge lengths to recover occult artefacts. Unfolding in parallel to this, Sal becomes increasingly concerned with the fate of her brother, whom she discovers has been infected by a demon called The Hand, and begins to wonder about the involvement of a man who calls himself Aaron and who seems to know far more than he should about everything.
Bookburners is an extremely effective series whose pacing is never feels less than perfect. The premise, which takes something from Warehouse 13 and something from every story ever to feature the Vatican as gatekeepers of ancient knowledge, works extremely well, largely because it takes its initial ideas seriously and doesn't use the archive as a trivial source of dei ex machina. The world building is excellent and the setting feels deep and detailed, with episodes like The Market Arcanum revealing an extra dimension of the magical world that has nothing to do with the Bookburners or their mission but which exists in an uneasy truce with it. None of this is terribly surprising given the calibre of the writers involved — Max Gladstone, Brian Francis Slattery, Mur Lafferty, Margaret Dunlap — but it needs to be said.
Highly recommended, especially if you're after something where each individual element comes in a small package but which builds up into an impressive whole.
