{"id":1519,"date":"2010-11-02T11:56:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T15:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1519"},"modified":"2010-11-02T11:56:34","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T15:56:34","slug":"the-devil-you-know-by-mike-carey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1519","title":{"rendered":"The Devil You Know – by Mike Carey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I had to cut bait on Connie Willis<\/a>‘ The Doomsday Book. \u00a0After reading half way through a 575 page book, I finally realized that a comedy of manners about time-travel into medieval Oxford was not going to do it for me. \u00a0I believe it is a fine work of literature and the author an artist of exceptional talent, but, personally speaking, I needed a bit more sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.<\/p>\n

All that being said, I landed a pretty good title with Mike Carey<\/a>‘s The Devil You Know. \u00a0Carey became known to me via his work on the DC\/Vertigo comic Hellblazer<\/a>, which itself is a spinoff from the iconic Saga of Swamp Thing and Sandman series. \u00a0Carey wrote John Constantine, the Hellblazer himself, as a wonderfully sarcastic anti-hero in a trench coat, prone to making VERY bad decisions, but also possessing a surprisingly strong moral compass.<\/p>\n

Felix Castor is John Constantine, but belonging solely to Carey. \u00a0In Hellblazer, Carey has to conform to a character that is not of his creation and managed by several authors over time. \u00a0With Castor, Carey is the boss from word go.<\/p>\n

Castor also operates in a slightly different professional capacity. \u00a0Whereas Constantine made a living going back and forth between the temporal plane and the underworld, Castor is merely a privateer exorcist, using his tin whistle to move the undead away from a haunted realm to god-knows-where. \u00a0But that little moral qualm of “killing the dead”, along with a suitably wrecked personal life and a weakness for the ladies makes this Chandler-esque supernatural romp most enjoyable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to cut bait on Connie Willis‘ The Doomsday Book. \u00a0After reading half way through a 575 page book, I finally realized that a comedy of manners about time-travel into medieval Oxford was not going to do it for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50],"tags":[1197,855,854,1196,1198],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1521,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}