Monday, February 6, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Liminal People by Ayize Jama Everett

 



The Liminal People is the first book in a four book urban fantasy series written by author Ayize Jama-Everett. The book was originally self-published in 2009, only to be picked up and republished in 2011 by Small Beer Press, one of my favorite small presses. It also picked up a blurb and recommendation from Nalo Hopkinson, a phenomenal author in her own right. So with the final book in the series coming out in January 2023, I was curious enough to pick up this first book from my eLibrary.

And there's plenty to like in The Liminal People, even if I didn't quite fall in love with it. The book is short but far from shallow, featuring a noir-esque plot following a man with the power to affect human bodies - for healing or harm - who finds himself leaving his post in a crime org to come to the aid of the woman he once loved before she left him. The setting, featuring a number of "Liminal People" with powers that can be used to really deadly and creepy ends, and who largely use those powers in dark ways, is far from original, but Everett really does it well, and it's helped by its lead character's highly cynical views...and by the lead character being an African American who has journeyed throughout the world and isn't simply American or even European-centric. Still while the plot works pretty well, there's a number of sketchy tropes and language choices that kind of date this novel which make it hard for me to super recommend...even though I may give the second book in the series a try anyway.

More specifics after the jump:

Trigger Warning: There are no overtly queer characters in the story, but some light homophobia at occasional points and one use of a gay slur directed at an antagonist by the main character. It's not good, and I suspect if the novel came out in the last few years it wouldn't be in there.



-------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------

Taggert was a different person once, before he joined the Razor Neck crew led by the mysterious Nordeen Maximus. Taggert possesses the supernatural ability to heal and adjust people's bodies...and, as he was taught by Nordeen, also the power to alter people's bodies to harm as well. But while Taggert may live in uneasy comfort, he dares not cross Nordeen, who has mysterious powers of his own, powers that allow Nordeen to always know when Taggert is lying, and powers that make Taggert shiver in fear.

Yet when the one woman Taggert once loved contacts him for help from London, Taggert finds himself bound to go to her aid. There he finds that his love's daughter, who possesses powers of her own, has gone missing, and a number of other power-wielders in London are swarming around the City in search for her. Taggert endeavors to save her, but to do so will put both him and the one he loves in grave jeopardy....not least of which if Taggert reveals the girl's existence to Nordeen, who will use her for his own purposes....

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The Liminal People is a noir-ish type tale: We have a first person narrator who is our main character, returning to a place from his past for the one he loves, getting involved in a dangerous mystery in the proceses. You have aspects of his past that are slowly revealed over time, although this isn't the type of book that relies on a big past reveal, and you have the mob boss type character in the background who threatens to unravel everything.

But what makes this different is the perspective of our protagonist is not the usual White American or European viewpoint, even as our protagonist is technically African-American. This is a well educated and connected man yes, but he's also a man who is jaded from years of wandering through various countries of Africa in a near future-ish world (probably), and seeing how warlords and others have reacted to his supernatural powers of healing and survival. He's even more jaded after meeting Nordeen, a man of immense power who has turned Taggert's powers to dark purposes - harming others and causing death - and who seems impossible to lie to or oppose. Taggert is a worldly man...but one who has been beaten down and made cynical by the world, even as he returns to a more normal-ish London seemingly to help the woman he loves...a woman who chose to avoid that world and to stay in the normal everyday world most humans know.

But of course the plot can't let things be normal, and so Taggert winds up on a winding plot to find that woman's daughter, a powerful telepath/telekinetic, and to figure out who is responsible for her disappearance and what to do with them...without alerting Nordeen, who might try to take the daughter for his own pruposes. The action that results here is really well done, especially as built into this setting...a world where some people secretly have supernatural powers is hardly new (hello X-Men) but the intrigue and rarity and crazy nature of it here is really well done, especially as it seems tied to potentially bigger outside powers that are only teased here. And the book has themes of purpose and family that are really well served by the short narrative, with it all ending in a really well done way.

That said, The Liminal People has some bumps that make reading it feel awkward and dated - at best. As mentioned above, while there are no queer characters, our protagonist throws around a homophobic slur at an antagonist at one point just as an insult, which is...not good. Another character is a woman whose power allows one to telepathically connect long distance with another on an astral-esque plane....if you have sex with her, which is just icky and uh no. The book actually plays with how icky that last one is, and that character does have her own autonomy and character rather than serving merely as a body to have sex with, so it isn't the biggest problem, but it's still not something I'm comfortable with reading or a trope I like these days. And while the novel does some interesting things with the setting and atmosphere and resolution, it still feels too short to really stand out in a particular way.

Still, this is a solid first novel, and with it being so short and the final novel coming out early in 2023, I'm almost curious to try the 2nd novel to see how things go from there. So a tentative recommend.
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