Whiskey and Water

[sawyl]

According to LibraryThing, it's taken me a shockingly long time — 35 days! — to finish Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water. Not, I stress, because I haven't enjoyed it, but rather because I liked it so much I diluted it by reading three or four other books at the same time.

When a teenager is brutally murdered on Halloween, Matthew Szczegielniak, literature professor, former Promethean and defender of New York, finds himself first on the scene. Feeling the weight of his failure to protect the girl, he enlists her friends to his cause and sets out to attempt to discover whether the murder might be the work of the fairy queen's familiar.

Meanwhile, Whiskey the Kelpie and Christopher Marlowe, lately returned from Hell, have a bone to pick with Matthew's former mentor and ex-lieutenant governor of New York, Jane Andraste, who Marlowe blaims for the death of his former lover, Merchaud, who was also Jane's husband and father to Elaine, the current queen of the Daoine Sidhe. After a failed confrontation with Andraste in her place of power, Marlowe plays the rules of the Prometheus Club to force his enemy to accept his challenge to a duel.

When Matthew and his coterie descend on her coven, Lily finds herself unexpected invited to Lucifer Morningstar's forthcoming masque in his palace in Hell. During the ball, various factions come out of the woodwork, maneuvering and scheming to get one over their rivals, ready to take advantage of the war between Fae and the Prometheus club that they all believe is coming. Leaving Hell to chase other leads, Lily, Matthew and Kit find themselves paying terrible prices in pursuit of the truth.

Although this approximates part of plot of Whiskey and Water, it doesn't really do it justice. The narrative teams with characters and factions, from the Australian Bunyip and his obsession with Whiskey to the intense rivalry between the Archangel Michael and the various different incarnations of the devil.

The book is fiercely intelligent, packed full of reference to Marlowe's works, in particular Dr Faustus, Elizabethan literature in general, and the various different versions of the Arthurian myths, which provide some of the characters and informs some of their fates. There are even a few handful of nods to Milton, with the Satan of Paradise Lost making a brief and disagreeable appearance at Lucifer's grand ball, and a couple of quotes from Donne.

The whole exercise is carried through with flare and elegance, thanks to Bear's densely descriptive style of writing — something she has talked about elsewhere. The characters feel strongly authentic and the denouement, when it finally arrives, is touching, humane and redemptive.

Extremely enjoyable stuff.