Dim Sum Asylum by Rhys Ford Formats available: paperback, ebook
Pages: 240
on June 9th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads
* Novel-length expansion of original short story found in Charmed & Dangerous anthology. *
Welcome to Dim Sum Asylum: a San Francisco where it’s a ho-hum kind of case when a cop has to chase down an enchanted two-foot-tall shrine god statue with an impressive Fu Manchu mustache that's running around Chinatown, trolling sex magic and chaos in its wake.
Senior Inspector Roku MacCormick of the Chinatown Arcane Crimes Division faces a pile of challenges far beyond his human-faerie heritage, snarling dragons guarding C-Town’s multiple gates, and exploding noodle factories. After a case goes sideways, Roku is saddled with Trent Leonard, a new partner he can’t trust, to add to the crime syndicate family he doesn’t want and a spell-casting serial killer he desperately needs to find.
While Roku would rather stay home with Bob the Cat and whiskey himself to sleep, he puts on his badge and gun every day, determined to serve and protect the city he loves. When Chinatown’s dark mystical underworld makes his life hell and the case turns deadly, Trent guards Roku’s back and, if Trent can be believed, his heart... even if from what Roku can see, Trent is as dangerous as the monsters and criminals they’re sworn to bring down.
My Review:
If Cole McGinnis from Dirty Kiss found himself in Kai Gracen’s world from Black Dog Blues, you’d end up with someone like Roku MacCormick in something like his Chinatown Division of the Arcane Crimes Squad in someplace like his fae-infused San Francisco. Possibly with a bit of Detective Inspector Chen from Liz Williams’ Snake Agent to add just that extra touch of the really, really supernaturally magical.
And it would be an excellent thing. And it is.
Roku’s San Francisco is just a side-step away from our own, and feels like it is built on the same somewhat shaky foundations. We don’t know when or how this history split off from our own, but whenever it did it created an analog of our world that is just close enough to identify with, and just different enough to make it really, really weird. And magical.
The story begins with Senior Inspector Roku MacCormick chasing down a man who has just stolen a clutch of eggs from a flock of little, tiny dragons. Yes, there be dragons here, and this bunch is pissed. Really, really pissed. And so is Roku, because the egg-thief is his soon to be ex police partner, and if Roku doesn’t get him the dragons will, or possibly the other way around. And the chase and eventual capture is only the beginning of this wild ride.
Roku, as is true of most urban fantasy heroes, is always in more than a bit of trouble. He’s also a man who is always caught between a rock and a hard place, and who is such a mass of contradictory identities and loyalties that he seems to always be on the outside looking in, no matter what he’s on the outside of, or where he’s looking into.
First, he’s a natural-born fae-human hybrid. It’s rare, but it does happen. And there is plenty of prejudice going around on all sides, humans vs. fae, fae vs. humans, and both sides vs. hybrids. But Roku’s also stuck with a foot on both sides of the cops vs. criminals fence as well, and it’s damned uncomfortable. His fae mother came from generations of cops. His mother’s fling was not merely human, but the son of the head of one of San Francisco’s most powerful crime families, the Takahashi. And while Roku’s father turned out to useless as both a father and as a son, Roku’s grandfather is absolutely certain that Roku is the perfect heir to the family criminal empire, even though Roku bleeds blue.
The case that brings Roku his new partner Trent Leonard and all the excitement he can handle is all about family. Roku’s family. His grandfather has put him in the crosshairs of his own family, as everyone thinks that the way to promotion is to wipe out the competition. And his grandfather’s enemies are after him because he looks like the best way to get at the well-guarded old man.
Meanwhile, there is deadly magic loose on the streets of Chinatown, aimed at Roku and anyone who gets close to him. It’s a road he’s been down before, and it cost him everything he held dear. He’s not sure he’s ready to go down that road again, but he has no choice if he wants to save the city and the people that he loves.
Escape Rating A-: It may be Pride Month, but that’s just an excuse for me. I read everything that Rhys writes, and usually fall somewhere between merely liking it and loving the hell out of it. Black Dog Blues was on my Best Ebook Romances list at Library Journal in 2013, before it was picked up by Dreamspinner and re-published. (I like to think the article helped!)
But seriously, Dim Sum Asylum is terrific urban fantasy, right on the border with paranormal romance. There is a romance here, but it feels like it takes second place to the mystery that desperately needs solving, and that’s just the way I like my urban fantasy.
The mystery is a wheels within wheels within wheels kind of thing, and as those wheels unspiral we get deeper and deeper into Roku’s world as well as his head and heart. The case starts with him chasing a sex-magic homunculus, middles with stone scorpions trying to leap down his throat, and ends with the destruction of animated statuary dragonflies. The magic gets bigger and the stakes get higher.
Roku begins the story with no hostages to fortune except Bob the Cat, and ends with him finding a partner for both his work and his life, and his possible return to both his adopted and his birth families, at least in some capacity. His circle gets wider as the stakes get more dangerous.
The ending of the case was marvelous and surprising, and I don’t want to spoil it. But there’s also a fascinating lesson in there for anyone who wants to take it.
And last but not least, Bob the Cat is my new favorite book pet. (Other people have book boyfriends, I have book pets). He’s completely different from Neko in the Cole McGinnis series, but equally manipulative and equally cat.
If you like the sound of Dim Sum Asylum, or maybe I should say the taste of Dim Sum Asylum, there’s a tour going on right now with a chance to win a $20 Gift Certificate to the etailer of your choice as well as chapters of a short story set in the same universe as Dim Sum Asylum. (Click on the logo above to connect to the tour) Me, I want to read that story!
