A Son of the Rock

Solaris, 2022, 158 p.

This is a curious concoction. Set in a world and a milieu, Goetia, which has strong resemblances to townships in Hollywood Westerns but an entirely different social order. It seems to be ruled by a group known as The Elect, with an underclass called the Fallen, powerful angel types known as Virtues, with added demon lords.

Celeste (only half Elect therefore one of the Fallen) is a croupier in an analogue of a Western Saloon, very protective of her younger sister Mariel since they were both left orphans. Celeste has a past with Abraxas, a demon lord, whose sexual attraction she can still feel but to whose control she did not completely fall into as she did not want to lose her soul.

The plot kicks off with the gruesome murder of an Elect, Daniel Alameda, in one of the saloon’s rooms. He was castrated and bled to death. It is Mariel who becomes accused of the crime.

The court being made up of the Elect only an examination into the accused’s spiritual fitness will determine guilt or innocence. But Fallen by default are not innocent. Nevertheless Celeste, engaged as advocatus diaboli by the head Virtue, is determined to prove Mariel’s lack of guilt.

Which means turning to Abraxas (who has a very close resemblance to Coyote in the author’s Sixth World books) for help. What he and she uncover and Celeste’s actions thereafter do not reflect well on either of the sisters.

Roanhorse writes well and has a cast of reasonably nuanced characters. Quite how all this sits with the overtones of the supernatural she is so fond of is debatable but I was willing to overlook that and go along for the ride.

Pedant’s corner:- “None of the Orders were fond of” (strictly; ‘None of the Orders was fond of’.) “‘I will abide your rules’” (abide by your rules,) “in the opposite direction of the camp” (the opposite direction to the camp,) “the metal gating” (it was the doors of a lift so ‘gating’ is okay but ‘grating’ is more natural,) “the box filled with the sound of mechanics” (these were not people who fix machines, but the machines themselves; so, ‘with the sound of the mechanism’,) drug (dragged,) “reached a deafening crescendo” (a crescendo is the rise, not its culmination; ‘crescendoed to a deafening climax’.)