Another notable stylistic element are the several levels of rhetoric, the simplest of which is "a relatively straightforward expository style" that is evident of many passages in the cetological chapters, though they are "rarely sustained, and serve chiefly as transitions" between more sophisticated levels.
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One of these is the " poetic " level of rhetoric, which Bezanson sees "well exemplified" in Ahab's quarter-deck soliloquy, to the point that it can be set as blank verse. Examples of this are "the consistently excellent idiom" of Stubb, such as in the way he encourages the rowing crew in a rhythm of speech that suggests "the beat of the oars takes the place of the metronomic meter". The fourth and final level of rhetoric is the composite , "a magnificent blending" of the first three and possible other elements:.
The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his buisiness, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
This passage, from a chapter that Bezanson calls a comical "prose poem", blends "high and low with a relaxed assurance".
Similar great passages include the "marvelous hymn to spiritual democracy" that can be found in the middle of "Knights and Squires". The elaborate use of the Homeric simile may not have been learned from Homer himself, yet Matthiessen finds the writing "more consistently alive" on the Homeric than on the Shakespearean level, especially during the final chase the "controlled accumulation" of such similes emphasizes Ahab's hubris through a succession of land-images, for instance: For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
The final phrase fuses the two halves of the comparison, the men become identical with the ship, which follows Ahab's direction. The concentration only gives way to more imagery, with the "mastheads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs". All these images contribute their "startling energy" to the advance of the narrative. When the boats are lowered, the imagery serves to dwarf everything but Ahab's will in the presence of Moby Dick. The influence of Shakespeare on the book has been analyzed by F.
Matthiessen in his study of the American Renaissance with such results that almost a half century later Bezanson still considered him "the richest critic on these matters. Matthiessen points out that the "mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing" at the end of "Cetology" Ch.
That thing unsays itself. There are men From whom warm words are small indignity. I mean not to incense thee. The pagan leopards—the unrecking and Unworshipping things, that live; and seek and give. No reason for the torrid life they feel! Most importantly, through Shakespeare, Melville infused Moby-Dick with a power of expression he had not previously possessed. Lawrence put it, convey something "almost superhuman or inhuman, bigger than life". In addition to this sense of rhythm, Melville acquired verbal resources which for Matthiessen showed that he "now mastered Shakespeare's mature secret of how to make language itself dramatic".
The creation of Ahab, Melville biographer Leon Howard discovered, followed an observation by Coleridge in his lecture on Hamlet: Ahab seemed to have "what seems a half-wilful over-ruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature", and "all men tragically great", Melville added, "are made so through a certain morbidness ; "all mortal greatness is but disease ". In addition to this, in Howard's view, the self-references of Ishmael as a "tragic dramatist", and his defense of his choice of a hero who lacked "all outward majestical trappings" is evidence that Melville "consciously thought of his protagonist as a tragic hero of the sort found in Hamlet and King Lear ".
Moby-Dick is based on Melville's experience on the whaler Acushnet , however even the book's most factual accounts of whaling are not straight autobiography. On December 30, , he signed on as a green hand for the maiden voyage of the Acushnet , planned to last for 52 months. Its owner, Melvin O.
Bradford, resembled Bildad, who signed on Ishmael, in that he was a Quaker: But the shareholders of the Acushnet were relatively wealthy, whereas the owners of the Pequod included poor widows and orphaned children. The crew was not as heterogenous or exotic as the crew of the Pequod. Five of the crew were foreigners, four of them Portuguese, and the others were American, either at birth or naturalized.
Three black men were in the crew, two seamen and the cook. Fleece, the cook of the Pequod , was also black, so probably modeled on this Philadelphia-born William Maiden, who was 38 years old when he signed for the Acushnet. Only 11 of the 26 original crew members completed the voyage. The others either deserted or were regularly discharged.
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Starbuck, was on an earlier voyage with Captain Pease, in the early s, and was discharged at Tahiti under mysterious circumstances. Hubbard also identified the model for Pip: John Backus, a little black man added to the crew during the voyage. Ahab seems to have had no model in real life, though his death may have been based on an actual event. Aboard were two sailors from the Nantucket who could have told him that they had seen their second mate "taken out of a whaleboat by a foul line and drowned". Melville attended a service there shortly before he shipped out on the Acushnet , and he heard a sermon by the chaplain, year-old Reverend Enoch Mudge , who is at least in part the model for Father Mapple.
Even the topic of Jonah and the Whale may be authentic, for Mudge was a contributor to Sailor's Magazine , which printed in December the ninth of a series of sermons on Jonah. In addition to his own experience on the whaling ship Acushnet , two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale. The other event was the alleged killing in the late s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick , in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity.
One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength. From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets.
The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a similar symbolism and single-minded motivation in hunting this whale, in that when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them:. As he drew near, with his long curved back looming occasionally above the surface of the billows, we perceived that it was white as the surf around him; and the men stared aghast at each other, as they uttered, in a suppressed tone, the terrible name of MOCHA DICK! Mocha Dick had over encounters with whalers in the decades between and the s.
He was described as being gigantic and covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea, nor the only whale to attack hunters. Melville remarked, "Ye Gods! What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster. While Melville had already drawn on his different sailing experiences in his previous novels, such as Mardi , he had never focused specifically on whaling.
The 18 months he spent as an ordinary seaman aboard the whaler Acushnet in —42, and one incident in particular, now served as inspiration. During a mid-ocean "gam" rendezvous at sea between ships , he met Chase's son William, who lent him his father's book. I questioned him concerning his father's adventure; [ This was the first printed account of it I had ever seen. The reading of this wondrous story on the landless sea, and so close to the very latitude of the shipwreck, had a surprising effect upon me.
The book was out of print, and rare. Melville let his interest in the book be known to his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw , whose friend in Nantucket procured an imperfect but clean copy which Shaw gave to Melville in April Melville read this copy avidly, made copious notes in it, and had it bound, keeping it in his library for the rest of his life. Moby-Dick contains large sections—most of them narrated by Ishmael—that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot, but describe aspects of the whaling business.
Hart , [78] which is credited with influencing elements of Melville's work, most accounts of whaling tended to be sensational tales of bloody mutiny, and Melville believed that no book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in as fascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. Melville found the bulk of his data on whales and whaling in five books, the most important of which was by the English ship's surgeon Thomas Beale, Natural History of the Sperm Whale , a book of reputed authority which Melville bought on July 10, Vincent, the general influence of this source is to supply the arrangement of whaling data in chapter groupings.
The third book was the one Melville reviewed for the Literary World in , J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise , which may have given Melville the first thought for a whaling book, and in any case contains passages embarrassingly similar to passages in Moby-Dick. Cheever's The Whale and His Captors , was used for two episodes in Moby-Dick but probably appeared too late in the writing of the novel to be of much more use. Although the book became the standard whaling reference soon after publication, Melville satirized and parodied it on several occasions—for instance in the description of narwhales in the chapter "Cetology", where he called Scoresby "Charley Coffin" and gave his account "a humorous twist of fact": The earliest surviving mention of the composition of what became Moby-Dick [85] [86] is the final paragraph of the letter Melville wrote to Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this. Some scholars have concluded that Melville composed Moby-Dick in two or even three stages. Reasoning from a series of inconsistencies and structural developments in the final version, they hypothesize that the work he mentioned to Dana was, in the words of Lawrence Buell , a "relatively straightforward" whaling adventure, but that reading Shakespeare and his encounters with Hawthorne inspired him to rewrite it as "an epic of cosmic encyclopedic proportions".
The most positive statements are that it will be a strange sort of a book and that Melville means to give the truth of the thing, but what thing exactly is not clear. Melville may have found the plot before writing or developed it after the writing process was underway. Considering his elaborate use of sources, "it is safe to say" that they helped him shape the narrative, its plot included. Ishmael, in the early chapters, is simply the narrator, just as the narrators in Melville's earlier sea adventures had been, but in later chapters becomes a mystical stage manager who is central to the tragedy.
Less than two months after mentioning the project to Dana, Melville reported in a letter of June 27 to Richard Bentley, his English publisher:. My Dear Sir, — In the latter part of the coming autumn I shall have ready a new work; and I write you now to propose its publication in England. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family had moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts , at the end of March The most intense work on the book was done during the winter of —, when Melville had changed the noise of New York City for a farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
The move may well have delayed finishing the book. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches. The letter also reveals how Melville experienced his development from his 25th year: But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould. Theories of the composition of the book have been harpooned in three ways, first by raising objections against the use of evidence and the evidence itself.
Scholar Robert Milder sees "insufficient evidence and doubtful methodology" at work. Bezanson is not convinced that before he met Hawthorne, "Melville was not ready for the kind of book Moby-Dick became", [85] because in his letters from the time Melville denounces his last two "straight narratives, Redburn and White-Jacket , as two books written just for the money, and he firmly stood by Mardi as the kind of book he believed in.
His language is already "richly steeped in 17th-century mannerisms", characteristics of Moby-Dick. A third type calls upon the literary nature of passages used as evidence. According to Milder, the cetological chapters cannot be leftovers from an earlier stage of composition and any theory that they are "will eventually founder on the stubborn meaningfulness of these chapters", because no scholar adhering to the theory has yet explained how these chapters "can bear intimate thematic relation to a symbolic story not yet conceived". Despite all this, Buell finds the evidence that Melville changed his ambitions during writing "on the whole convincing".
Melville first proposed the English publication in a 27 June letter to Richard Bentley , London publisher of his earlier works. Thomas Tanselle explains that for these earlier books, American proof sheets had been sent to the English publisher and that publication in the United States had been held off until the work had been set in type and published in England. This procedure was intended to provide the best though still uncertain claim for the English copyright of an American work.
The final stages of composition overlapped with the early stages of publication. In June , Melville wrote to Hawthorne that he was in New York to "work and slave on my 'Whale' while it is driving through the press". Three weeks later, the typesetting was almost done, as he announced to Bentley on 20 July: Since earlier chapters were already plated when he was revising the later ones, Melville must have "felt restricted in the kinds of revisions that were feasible". On 20 July, Melville accepted, after which Bentley drew up a contract on 13 August. For over a month, these proofs had been in Melville's possession, and because the book would be set anew in England, he could devote all his time to correcting and revising them.
He still had no American publisher, so the usual hurry about getting the English publication to precede the American was not present. He published the book less than four weeks later. The title of a new work by Mr. Melville, in the press of Harper and Brothers, and now publishing in London by Mr. On 18 October, the English edition, The Whale , was published in a printing of only copies, fewer than Melville's previous books. Their slow sales had convinced Bentley that a smaller number was more realistic.
The London Morning Herald on October 20 printed the earliest known review. On 19 November, Washington received the copy to be deposited for copyright purposes. The first American printing of 2, copies was almost the same as the first of Mardi , but the first printing of Melville's other three Harper books had been a thousand copies more.
The English edition, set by Bentley's printers from the American page proofs with Melville's revisions and corrections, differs from the American edition in over wordings and thousands of punctuation and spelling changes. Excluding the preliminaries and the one extract, the three volumes of the English edition came to pages [] and the single American volume to pages. This list was probably drawn up by Melville himself: Melville's involvement with this rearrangement is not clear: The largest of Melville's revisions is the addition to the English edition of a word footnote in Chapter 87 explaining the word "gally".
The edition also contains six short phrases and some 60 single words lacking in the American edition. The British publisher hired one or more revisers who were, in the evaluation of scholar Steven Olsen-Smith, responsible for "unauthorized changes ranging from typographical errors and omissions to acts of outright censorship". These expurgations also meant that any corrections or revisions Melville may have marked upon these passages are now lost. The final difference in the material not already plated is that the "Epilogue", thus Ishmael's miraculous survival, is omitted from the British edition.
Obviously, the epilogue was not an afterthought supplied too late for the English edition, for it is referred to in "The Castaway": Since nothing objectionable was in it, most likely it was somehow lost by Bentley's printer when the "Etymology" and "Extracts" were moved. After the sheets had been sent, Melville changed the title. After expressing his hope that Bentley would receive this change in time, Allan said that "Moby-Dick is a legitimate title for the book, being the name given to a particular whale who if I may so express myself is the hero of the volume".
Changing the title was not a problem for the American edition, since the running heads throughout the book only showed the titles of the chapters, and the title page, which would include the publisher's name, could not be printed until a publisher was found. When Allan's letter arrived, no sooner than early October, Bentley had already announced The Whale in both the Athenaem and the Spectator of 4 and 11 October. The British printing of copies sold fewer than within the first four months. In , some remaining sheets were bound in a cheaper casing, and in , enough sheets were still left to issue a cheap edition in one volume.
After three years, the first edition was still available, almost copies of which were lost when a fire broke out at the firm in December In , a second printing of copies was issued, in , a third of copies, and finally in , a fourth printing of copies, which sold so slowly that no new printing was ordered.
First, British literary criticism was more sophisticated and developed than in the still young republic, with British reviewing done by "cadres of brilliant literary people" [] who were "experienced critics and trenchant prose stylists", [] while the United States had only "a handful of reviewers" capable enough to be called critics, and American editors and reviewers habitually echoed British opinion. Twenty-one reviews appeared in London, and later one in Dublin. Melville himself never saw these reviews, and Parker calls it a "bitter irony" that the reception overseas was "all he could possibly have hoped for, short of a few conspicuous proclamations that the distance between him and Shakespeare was by no means immeasurable.
One of the earliest reviews, by the extremely conservative critic Henry Chorley [] in the highly regarded London Athenaeum , described it as. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad rather than bad English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed.
Melville cannot do without savages, so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities", who appeared in "an odd book, professing to be a novel; wantonly eccentric, outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive". One problem was that since the English edition omitted the epilogue, British reviewers read a book with a first-person narrator who apparently did not survive to tell the tale.
Bentley is not explained". Other reviewers were fascinated enough with the book to accept its perceived flaws. John Bull praised the author for making literature out of unlikely and even unattractive matter, and the Morning Post found that delight far oustripped the improbable character of events. Melville's style was usually praised regardless of the reviewer's judgment of the book, but some perceived the same tendency to over-doing here, and some found his style too American.
Some sixty reviews appeared in America, the criterion for counting as a review being more than two lines of comment. The earliest American review, in the Boston Post for November 20, quoted the London Athenaeum ' s scornful review, not realizing that some of the criticism of The Whale did not pertain to Moby-Dick. This last point, and the authority and influence of British criticism in American reviewing, is clear from the review's opening: The Post deemed the price of one dollar and fifty cents far too much: The reviewer of the December New York Eclectic Magazine had actually read Moby-Dick in full, and was puzzled why the Athenaeum was so scornful of the ending.
The attack on The Whale by the Spectator was reprinted in the December New York International Magazine , which inaugurated the influence of another unfavorable review. Rounding off what American readers were told about the British reception, in January Harper's Monthly Magazine attempted some damage control, and wrote that the book had "excited a general interest" among the London magazines. The most influential American review, ranked according to the number of references to it, appeared in the weekly magazine Literary World , which had printed Melville's "Mosses" essay the preceding year.
The author of the unsigned review in two installments, on 15 and 22 November, was later identified as publisher Evert Duyckinck. What a book Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones. It hardly seemed to me that the review of it, in the Literary World, did justice to its best points.
The Transendental socialist George Ripley published a review in the New York Tribune for 22 November, in which he compared the book favorably to Mardi , because the "occasional touches of the subtle mysticism" was not carried on to excess but kept within boundaries by the solid realism of the whaling context. Porter praised the book, and all of Melville's five earlier works, as the writings "of a man who is at once philosopher, painter, and poet". Many reviewers, Parker observes, had come to the conclusion that Melville was capable of producing enjoyable romances, but they could not see in him the author of great literature.
However, only New York's literary underground seemed to take much interest, just enough to keep Melville's name circulating for the next 25 years in the capital of American publishing. During this time, a few critics were willing to devote time, space, and a modicum of praise to Melville and his works, or at least those that could still be fairly easily obtained or remembered.
Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten. In , American author Carl Van Doren became the first of this period to proselytize about Melville's value. In his idiosyncratic but influential Studies in Classic American Literature , novelist, poet, and short story writer D. Lawrence celebrated the originality and value of American authors, among them Melville. Perhaps surprisingly, Lawrence saw Moby-Dick as a work of the first order despite his using the expurgated original English edition which also lacked the epilogue. The Modern Library brought out Moby-Dick in and the Lakeside Press in Chicago commissioned Rockwell Kent to design and illustrate a striking three-volume edition which appeared in Random House then issued a one-volume trade version of Kent's edition, which in they reprinted as a less expensive Modern Library Giant.
The novel has been adapted or represented in art, film, books, cartoons, television, and more than a dozen versions in comic-book format. American author Ralph Ellison wrote a tribute to the book in the prologue of his novel Invisible Man , where the narrator remembers a moment of truth under the influence of marijuana, and evocates a church service: American songwriter Bob Dylan elaborated on the book in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech of , citing the book as one of the three books that influenced him most.
Dylan's description of the book ends with an acknowledgment: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is the latest accepted revision , reviewed on 16 December For other uses, see Moby-Dick disambiguation. List of Moby-Dick characters. Retrieved 13 December The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms 4th ed.
From Puritanism to Postmodernism. Yankee whalers in the South Seas. A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, — Harcourt, Brace, , Bercaw, "A Fine, Boisterous Something": Retrieved on 30 November Archived 15 December at the Wayback Machine. Document, Drama, Dream," in John Bryant ed. Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America.
Unpainted to the Last: Discussion of Moby-Dick at 6: Isle of the Cross ca Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick Cetology Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote. This page was last edited on 16 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
I loved the banter between Harmony and her team-mates. We also got to visit places like the Bast Club and to meet a few familiar faces from the Faust series as well as a host of interesting new characters. All in all I really enjoyed this story. The ending was satisfying but also hinted at future issues for Harmony and her team. Christina Traister did a great job with the audio. Initially I was a little disappointed with her voice for Jessie but now that I've had time to grow accustomed to it I find I quite like it. View all 8 comments.
Feb 28, Choko rated it really liked it Shelves: We need to solve the little demon problem we seem to have I have come to enjoy his style of storytelling and love the characters he creates. She is a bit stiff, straight-laced and still completely open to mystery, magic and the demons that are infesting our world. So, she is working for a super-secret agency together with a wolf-like lady who is hilarious at all times, a psychological profiler who happens to be in a wheelchair, and a hormonal teenager who is thinking with his "head" and the rest of the time tries to be their communications and data retrieving genius.
Only this time the job needs a NASA type of specialist, or at least someone who knows space rocket flying stuff. So after the first dude that their boss sends to help does not "work out", Harmony calls on her somewhat ex-boyfriend and space engineering college drop-out, deputy sheriff Cody, currently hot stuff: And obviously he used to be a boy scout, because he was "Always Prepared!!! This is the group who this time around has to save the world from an evil entity in space who is about to crash on Earth Good luck saving the world, when there are at least 3 more major players trying to reach said entity for reasons of their own, some of them nefarious For the rest, you guys have to read the book and the series yourselves!
You will not regret it!!! Now I wish you all Happy Reading and many more wonderful books to come: View all 12 comments. Feb 26, Robin Bridge Four rated it really liked it Shelves: This is some straight-up James Bond stuff. No offense to the uptight and super repressed Skully Harmony, she might be the glue that holds a team together but she is definitely not the most interesting person there. Hard to compete with the rest of the Scooby Doo squad since one of them was raised by a serial killer and might have part of a wolf god in her, the other hacked the mob and ended up in witsec and he is only nineteen and the final member of the crew might be in a wheelchair but she will run circles around you with her psychological insight.
Jessie is by far my favorite character in this book. She totally steals the show with her past and her snarky sarcastic wit. She is the leader of the team but that is more because she is willing to make the hard calls without hesitation than anything else.
Harmony, I was raised by a serial killer. On my thirteenth birthday? He made me hold the knife. You try to do the right thing, even when it costs you. You believe in big ideas, like honor and compassion and justice. Even when it makes you look like a damn fool. Together they are a great team and the Wo-Mance between them is strong. There is a smidge of romance happing sort of and Cody make a reappearance in this one as well. Cody is super likable and he is a small town cop that recently learned there is a lot of paranormal stuff out there.
But he is super goody-two-shoes. This would normally not be a problem for me, I like nice guys. We will just see where that whole thing leads. There are some hints to a bigger plots behind the mission that the crew went on that were very intriguing. And you know who else showed up in town right around the same time as my people? Then I flew home to Richmond for a couple of days.
Guess who was waiting for me, in my living room, with my daughter sitting on her lap. Another great installment to the series. View all 4 comments. Mar 22, Eric rated it really liked it Shelves: Red Knight Falling picks up not long after the end of the last book. Harmony and the rest of the team are given a new mission of the highest priority. A satellite, somehow linked to a powerful hostile entity, is falling to Earth and Vigilant Lock is tasked with recovering the downed satellite.
Their mission soon becomes even more complicated and sends them traveling all over the country as they race against the clock to avoid disaster. The action was non-stop as Harmony and the team raced squared off against a variety of threats both mundane and magical.
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The banter from the first book was back, and I thought Schaefer did an excellent job fleshing out several of the characters. The only member of the team that still feels a bit flat to me is April. As a bonus, one of the characters from the first book makes an appearance and ends up playing a big role in events. RKF was a bit different than the first book in the series. Where the first book was more of a mystery that meshed some horror elements with urban fantasy, RKF was closer to a straight up action book.
Magic plays a critical role but is often presented as just another tool, and good bits of the book read almost like a Brad Thor style thriller. It worked though, and kept me entertained all the way through. View all 25 comments. Jan 27, carol. Urban fantasy often falls into what I think of as 'gym reads. Good gym reads are well written enough that they don't remind me I'm pedaling or stepping away in repetitive motion, and great ones may even get me working harder with adrenaline, or keep me on the machine longer than I planned. Schaefer's Daniel Faust series is definitely one of the latter, so I was looking forward to giving his spin-off series st Urban fantasy often falls into what I think of as 'gym reads.
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Schaefer's Daniel Faust series is definitely one of the latter, so I was looking forward to giving his spin-off series starring Agent Black. This is the second book in the series, improving somewhat on the first. Holly Black is back for her second mission with the Vigilant Lock, a secret arm of the government created to deal with occult threats. Actually, first they have an unofficial mission: Things go a little off the rails and the team ends up in hot water with their boss after someone gets cell phone footage of a team member running over a suspect.
Further recriminations are put on hold for their real mission: Action is steady, if not always logical. The team heads to Oregon, posing as civilians while they narrow in on the landing site. Things go haywire when other unknown agencies, mercenaries, and Dark Forces become involved. They end up flying to Florida, to Chicago and California as part of the mission to prevent the apocalypse, dealing with double agents, a boss that occasionally seems to work against them and trouble in their own unit. The ending was satisfactory and paves the way for the next mission.
Characters feel like any standard team operation show. We have the prodigy, awkward computer geek, the wheelchair-bound psychologist who provides the logical thought I think? There are side involvements regarding personal dating-type relationships with some of the team members of course, not the logician to give them a little more depth, but for me it felt rather single note.
I enjoyed Jessie's personality, however, and would happily give a spin-off with her a shot. Every now and then, a world-building problem intrudes, much as in the first book. The days when you didn't know what you know. The bliss of ignorance. You can't see the world like they can, not anymore.
More importantly, at one point Harmony and teammate Jessie decide to investigate a supernatural 'neutral zone. All while above a room full of folk with magic powers, in a neutral territory. I hate it when lead characters are TSTL. Still, it was an enjoyable distraction, but I'm definitely looking forward to return to the Faust series.
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Recommended for those times you want lots of UF action without overt sexism. View all 14 comments. Feb 20, Nafeeza rated it really liked it Shelves: Feb 26, Cathy cathepsut rated it really liked it Shelves: I am a little undecided, if I liked the story more or less than that of the first book. The first book was more classic horror setting, while the second one was a bit more sci-fi. It's done well and the supernatural merges smoothly with the rest. It doesn't just feel like an afterthought or a little add-on. Could be more of it though, for my taste.
The world-building could be a bit more detailed as well for me, bu I am a little undecided, if I liked the story more or less than that of the first book. The world-building could be a bit more detailed as well for me, but what is there is done well. I am guessing it is going to take a few more books to develop all the plot bunnies that are here.
I am a little disappointed in the lack of character development. We have the same four team members fighting the good fight. I have trouble remembering the name of the main character telling the story. That can't be good, right? And there is no expansion on Jesse's background or skills either. Alice is almost non-existent.
Kevin gets some page time, but isn't developed either. I hope we will get to see some of the characters from book one in the next book again. So, yes, entertaining read, good action, good plot. Gets a star deducted for lack of character development. It's all a bit one-dimensional. Lots of potential though Feb 05, Mr. Matt rated it liked it Shelves: Harmony Black is back.
Fresh off of foiling a supernatural entity that preyed on children in her home town, Special Agent Black finds herself and her team assigned to confront a threat far greater. A mysterious satellite - the Red Knight - is in a steadily decaying orbit and will crash down to Earth in weeks - if not days. Recovering a sattelite should be no problem, right? Well, unfortunately, this satellite has an occult purpose. It shields the Earth from a Cthulhu-esque entity from between rea Harmony Black is back. It shields the Earth from a Cthulhu-esque entity from between realities.
If this seal isn't back in space when the entity returns to Earth than we're all in deep, deep trouble. To make matters worse there are all sorts of unscrupulous people that are also after the seal. The main story-line follows Harmony and her team as they pull at the threads in seam of the mystery. They encounter challenges, uncover their rivals, and somehow power through.
For the most part it works. I like the fact that Harmony and her team never use magic as a blunt instrument a la Harry Dresden. Instead, like Daniel Faust in the same universe, they use a much more subtle application. In the end, it is about unraveling a mystery and magic is just one tool in their arsenal - not the only trick up their sleeves. Also nice are the drive-bys of places we've visited with Daniel Faust - the club and appliance repair shop in Chicago, for example.
If you've read the Danile Faust books it helps to flesh out the universe and make it more real. Unfortunately, the book, in my opinion, just didn't rise to that next level. I'm a big fan of the authors, but this just felt more pedestrian to me. Harmony and her colleagues remained characters in a book rather than people that I know.
They just didn't jump off the page at me. Also, I really dislike these apocalyptic story lines where the end of the world is the alternative to failing. Why can't we just have neat little stories that just happen to involve magic and demons and etc.? Why is the fate of the Earth always on the line? Three stars out of five.
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If you're a fan of the author, then, yes, by all means pick it up now. If you like Urban Fantasy as a genre, then, yes, pick it up as well - just don't be prepared to have your socks blown off. Mar 19, Alaina rated it it was amazing Shelves: This series just keeps getting better! Red Knight Falling was about a mysterious satellite that is falling back to Earth. Well, have no fear guys because Harmony and her team are on this shit. Oh, and just to make it even more exciting.. I love Harmony so much! Her friendship with Jesse basically brings sunshine into my dull life at work.
I pretty much zoomed through this audio and then took my sweet time coming up with comments and then sort of just forgot about this review. Well, hopefully I can do this book justice because it was amazing! I was highly entertained the entire time and basically on the edge of my seat whether it was from being excited and wanting to know what was going to happen next in my audio book or I just had to pee Loved everyone in this book.. I don't know how to spell the crazy psychotic girls name but it's that. She was so weird. Her accent probably made her more crazy than she was.
I was always suspicious of her and her "Death" in the first book.. She was a good villain I just felt so bad for Kevin. Thank god Jesse kicked her ass - over and over again. Besides that, I loved that Cody tagged a long for a little of this book. Okay, a lot more than a little. He better come back to my girl Harmony.. Then the epilogue blew my mind and of course got me hooked on the next book. I haven't even started that audio and I already know I'm going to love it too!!
Overall, I loved this book. I was never bored and I also never thought the pacing was slow. Loved the new mystery and now I'm wondering what the hell Harmony and her scooby gang are in for in the next book. Mar 07, Steve rated it really liked it Shelves: Another solid entry in the Harmony Black series.
And of course, it ends on a cliffhanger, prepping the way for the next book in this story arc. Nov 19, Jason rated it it was amazing Shelves: I cannot get enough urban fantasy detective stories these days and Harmony Black strikes all the right chords. This book are has hot FBI lead agents. A witch or two. Demons and things that go bump in the night. And what makes this one so freaking fun is it is a story about a beast in space wanting to consume the earth.
I loved the characters, the writing, the world, and the story.. In this case, saving the world is literal, not figurative! The second book continues with supernatural forces, but shifts emphasis to how Vigilant Lock fits in with, and battles against, other known and unknown secret government teams, mercenaries and megalomaniac supervillains.
There are twists and turns with nearly every chapter, and Harmony, Jesse, April and Kevin learn some surprising things about loyalty and trust! While Harmony expresses attraction to small town cop Cody, she still confounds lesbian Jesse with her choice of attire. I continue to have hope that Harmony and Jesse may yet become partners beyond the team relationship! Both the author and the narrator did fantastic jobs, and I highly recommend the audiobook! Jan 22, Lukasz rated it liked it Shelves: As usually things go off the rails and a simple side-job turns into saving the world kind of job.
Team members must recover the Red Knight satellite that seems to attract a hostile unknown entity. As usually action is steady, loud and violent. I have to admit, though, that the ending was a bit irritating. April stays in the background. On the other hand, Craig Schaefer plays a long game. All of his books and their meta plot interconnect.
All in all, it was an enjoyable and fast pulp read. Just don't overanalyze this book. Dec 18, Mihir rated it really liked it. The previous book focused on Harmony and at the same time did an admirable job of setting up the series while also giving us a detailed look into Harmony's past. This book the author decides to switch it up and gives us a look into another character's past. Who it is, I'll leave for the readers to read and find out. The story begins with an urban legend about a satellite titled Red Knight which was seen in Earth's orbit in Three years before the first official satellite "Sputnik" was even launched.
The urban legend is real as our "circus team" finds out to their dismay and it's crashing somewhere in Oregon. The team is forced to scramble and try to find out who or what is causing its eventual crash. They also discover that there's something out there in space that is drawn to the Red Knight and they will have to see who or what that thing is and what is its connection to the Red Knight.
Thus begins the second volume of the Harmony Black series and it is as much action-packed as its predecessor if not more. There are betrayals, double-agents and some big plot twists for the overall series. Infact one prominent big plot point is tied to something that was mentioned very minutely in the first Harmony Black volume. I enjoyed how the author made this book much different than the previous one and yet provided us with so much more.
Red Knight Falling has a very adventure-thriller feel to it and this was starkly different from the horror-thriller feel of its predecessor. The plot very much feels like a James Rollins adventure thriller and Craig Schaefer makes sure that his signature touches such as multiple plot twists, a multivariate character cast and a storyline that will confound, are all present. This book also ties in nicely with a previous Daniel Faust book and it was very, very intriguing to visit those characters and locations but from Harmony's perspective.
This check-in will be very much appreciated by readers of the Daniel Faust series as they get to see those characters and locations after the events of that book and will gain a deeper insight about them. This book also features Cody's return however he as a character didn't quite strike my fancy.
His role though is important to the events of this book and for Harmony as well. The biggest positive about this book was all the secrets it reveals as well all showcasing how this series ties into the Daniel Faust series as well as the author's political fantasy series The Revanche Cycle. This is the first book to make this connection such a blatantly open one. There's also the background revelations about one of the Circus team members after Harmony's turn in the first book, however their backstory doesn't quite seem as interesting.
Lastly the book ends on a big, big note and I can't stress enough how much that will make you want to read the next book. The downsides though are that while this book has all the aforementioned positives but the main character on whom the spotlight is turned upon, is not as enticing as Harmony.
The only other downside I could think is of is that the book kind of takes on a romantic sub-plot for one of its protagonists. This sub-plot however doesn't feel organic and seems to be attached for a specific purpose. I hope the author clarifies this situation in the third book. Red Knight Falling is a cracker of a sequel that takes on the positives of its predecessor and builds up on it to provide a bigger, and better read. While there are a couple downsides, they don't really detract much from the overall enjoyment. It's still a fun read that has me very, very excited for the future volumes of this series.
Oct 13, T. Elliott Tiffany rated it really liked it Shelves: This is the second book in the Harmony Black series, and pretty much seals Craig Schaefer as an author I'm going to carry on reading. In Red Knight Falling , he expands Harmony's world and introduces what is probably going to be a multi-book story arc in addition to the Red Knight plot. I have to say, I really like Harmony's chara This is the second book in the Harmony Black series, and pretty much seals Craig Schaefer as an author I'm going to carry on reading.
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I have to say, I really like Harmony's character. She's a professional, not some kind of loose cannon. She does her job, and she does it well. I also like the fact that Schaefer has written two female characters who work together, and are becoming friends. I hope he resists the temptation to add sex to the mix. Interestingly, I think Harmony is a better leader than Jessie - Jessie might be louder and more dramatic and showy, but it's Harmony who keeps her mind on the job. I'm wondering where Schaefer will go with that.