The Interminables

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This is a post-apocalyptic, urban fantasy, superhero mash-up. Apparently, sometime in 2010, an ancient evil goddess/wizard, Shokat Anoushak, emerged from her long period of hiding to destroy the cities of the world. How she did this and how many cities she destroyed are not mentioned, but her actions have left the Earth - certainly the eastern half of America - in ruin, with vast sections somehow twisted into other dimensions where magic may work and cultures that were never found on this Earth have made a home.These areas worst of these areas are called “fractures” and the less affected are called “spell scars,” and there is one that covers the east coast called the “Big East,” another one around the Great Lakes and others dotted across North America.

Also, hidden from the mundane world were “cabals” of human wizards who were working their crafts without attracting attention. When Shokat Anoushak - always both names - attacked the world in the 11 month-long “Wizard War” that fractured the Earth, the cabals rallied to fight her, and were eventually and, literally, inexplicably, able to stop her by immolating Providence, Rhode Island, its inhabitants and Shokat Anoushak and her legions of monsters.

One of those cabals, the “12th Hour,” has taken over administrative control over the Big East and two of its operatives, Edmond Templeton, aka the “Hour Thief,” and the ghostly and ghastly Dr. Istvan Czern Czernin, the undead embodiment of World War I, are tasked to prevent the smuggling of deadly ‘Bernault devices” to the interdicted fortress of Barrio Libertad, a fortress that has emerged mysteriously on the ruins of Providence. Templeton is a wizard with the ability to teleport and magical control over time that he vampirically steals from other people and then can use when he needs to lengthen his life, speed up time for himself and others, and avoid being killed because “his time is not up.”

There is a lot of backstory here. I started off with high hopes for this book. I liked the backstory and setting, and I was intrigued by the characters. The author plays the character's intentions and knowledge close to the vest, which made it worthwhile to read the narrative closely for clues about what was going on.

Unfortunately, about half-way through the book, I started getting tired of the characters seeming to know what was going on, but not sharing it with us. Likewise, there were far too many half-started plot threads that went nowhere. For example, Edmond has been racked with grief about the death of his girlfriend Grace, but - lo! - Grace shows up as a comic-book superhero who hasn't bothered to contact him for seven years and is over him. So, what comes of this thread? Absolutely nothing. Grace comes on the scene as a very powerful superhero and kicks some ass and then is kind of a jerk. She is valuable because she provides an entry into Barrio Libertad but that is it. Similarly, there was a meeting between the Triskelion mercenaries and the 12th Hour and Barrio Libertad that goes nowhere. The ending involved copious use of Edmond's time power, but I couldn't figure out what was going on.

The heart of the story is supposed to be the relationship between Edmond and Istvan, but for the most part Edmond was a jerk and Istvan seemed to be carrying some kind of homoerotic infatuation for Edmond, and, then, Edmond would return to being a jerk, to everyone, including himself, as he bore his guilt over everything, and Istvan would periodically pout and yell at Edmond, etc., etc. Frankly, none of the characters were sympathetic as much as I wanted them to be.

Edmond and Istvan had the potential to be interesting characters, and, except for the yelling, bitterness, back-biting and jerkiness, they were. Istvan is a ghost who has somehow become the incarnation of World War I on the “conceptual level.” He normally looks like a maimed Austro-Hungarian officer, but when he gets excited, he exudes the smell of mustard gas, become skeletal and manifests barb wire. (Actually, he seems to manifest barb wire most of the time.) I liked the nod to Platonism as the basis of magic. Edmond seems to have adopted a “1920s man about town” costume - opera cape, top hat, tux and tails - although this seems like an unwise outfit for close-contact fighting, or, at least, I kept wondering about how he didn't lose his top hat.

In sum, I liked parts of the book, and was favorably impressed by the beginning, but by the end I had to wonder, “what the hell just happened?”