By Orrin Grey
Bullington, Jesse. The Enterprise of Death. Orbit, 2011. US $14.99. ISBN 9780316087346.
Back when I reviewed Jesse Bullington’s debut novel, The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, I said that it was going to “divide a lot of people, and get a lot of much-deserved attention,” and I’d say the same for his sophomore effort. But The Enterprise of Death is at least as different from The Brothers Grossbart as the two books are similar.
While both books take us on a madcap tour of supernatural and historical Europe, their protagonists could not be more different. The story of Enterprise concerns Awa, who is apprenticed against her will to a necromancer and subsequently finds herself caught up in his machinations. Awa is a Moor, a lesbian and a necromancer in her own right, any one of which would probably be enough to get her into a great deal of trouble in 16th Century Europe, and she’s joined in her adventures by real-life historical figures like painter and mercenary Niklaus Manuel Deutsch and even Paracelsus himself, not to mention larger-than-life figures like Monique the gun-toting soldier of fortune and Awa’s various undead allies and enemies.
Like The Brothers Grossbart, Enterprise isn’t for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. There’s necrophilia, cannibalism, syphilis, reanimated corpses, and corpse-eating monsters, to name just a few. But while Enterprise is often just as gruesome, macabre, profane, and scatalogical as its predecessor, it’s also much more human. While the titular Grossbart Brothers were great broad characters, the cast of Enterprise all seemed more fully created and their pathos more deeply felt. It would be hard to find a hero in all of The Brothers Grossbart, but Enterprise is full of characters who, while deeply flawed, are also often genuinely heroic in their longing to do what’s right.
As in The Brothers Grossbart, it may take a little while to get used to the rhythm of Bullington’s writing, but once you do, it pulls you in and feels perfectly natural. Once I got going, I found myself almost unable to put Enterprise down and, most notably, every time the story veered in some direction that I expected to find annoying, Bullington would either veer away again, or otherwise twist it in some enchanting fashion so that I never once found the adventure tiresome.
Ultimately, The Enterprise of Death, like so many great fantasy novels, is a story of friendship and acceptance. There’s a quest, as well, and magic, and monsters (just wait ’til you meet the Bastards of the Schwartzwald), but the friendships form the book’s beating heart. While the exploits of Awa and her companions are still leavened liberally with a gallows humor, Enterprise is seldom as laugh-out-loud funny as The Brothers Grossbart, but the genuineness and humanity of Enterprise more than make up for any deficit. And, y’know, a bunch of Ray Harryhausen-style skeletons running around don’t hurt a thing.
Bio: Orrin Grey is a skeleton who likes monsters. His stories of cursed books, mad monks and ominous paintings have appeared in Bound for Evil, Delicate Toxins, and, of course, at Innsmouth Free Press, among other places. He can be found online at www.orringrey.com.