Book Review: Green by Jay Lake

OK I’ve got to come out and say that Green by Jay Lake is a weird book. Now I know what you may be thinking, because I’m thinking it too. You’re thinking, “The Dark is such a weird and bizarre monster that he probably thinks David Lynch movies are perfectly normal and romantic comedies are strange.” You’re right after a fashion, but believe me, I know weird when I see it. Sometimes weird is like David Lynch movies and other times weird is like opening a closet to investigate a strange noise and finding a giant Persian cat doing something unnatural with a goose. The goose might be wearing a hat and saying something over and over in Portuguese. This book is a little like that kind of weird. (Please note that the above scenario has never happened to me, I swear.)

Yes yes this is a fantasy book. It’s not exactly what I call “dark fantasy” but it was dark enough to keep my attention. Green is set in another world somewhat like our own and maybe in Asia somewhere. A little girl is sold by her dirt-farmer father to a man who hopes to turn her into a concubine. Fortunately or unfortunately, the man also has a hidden agenda. Besides the concubine gig, he also wishes to turn the little girl into an assassin to kill the Duke. The Duke rules the city and has used magic to live far beyond his years. The man wishes to end the Duke’s life and rule. For the most part, the reader is left to ponder who is part of this conspiracy and who is not. Along with being taught how to be a very well educated concubine, the girl is basically ritually abused and also, on the sly, schooled on how to be an assassin.

As you can probably guess, after years of this sort of treatment the resulting person, who calls herself “Green”, ends up being a little twisted. While she is ultimately compelling and sympathetic, Green spends most of the book in a bad mood and is vaguely naive and unpredictably violent. Green likes to dress up in strange menacing costumes and wander around cities. Green joins a cult of women who hunt down and kill murderers. Green finds she has a taste for being tied up and lashed to get her kicks.

The book is quite the page-turner. You know the kind of book where if you’re busy with something else (like say you’re toiling over some diabolical project in your lab), it’s almost like the taste of the book is stuck in your head, and you want to go read some more? It’s that kind of book. The writing is excellent. The characters are well-developed and compelling. The story is suspenseful. My only complaint is that it gets kind of bogged down in a few places and I found myself thinking that the plot ended up being kind of more complicated than it needed to be. At the same time, I couldn’t stop reading it.

Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 3 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 1 out of 5

Final result: We have a winner. If you’re a fan of Fantasy fiction and you’re looking for a good book to read I say look no further. I also have to say that the cover art by Dan Dos Santos is spectacular. I found you can download wallpaper-sized copies of the cover here, after you jump through some hoops.

Green by Jay Lake – Tor Books – 2009
Jay Lake on Amazon
Green by Jay Lake on Amazon

Many thanks to Tor Books for sending me this book to review. (See my disclosure policy.) Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension. I’m working on it! See you next time!