Gilded Latten Bones is the 13th book in Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I.
fantasy/detective series. Like all Garrett books, Gilded Latten
Bones' primary plot stands alone, but I very strongly recommend
reading the previous Garrett books before reading this one; the story
is enjoyable on its own, but there's a lot about the book that is
more effective if you've spent time with Garrett and company before.
As the story begins, Garrett has finally started to settle down. He and his longtime
on-again off-again girlfriend Tinnie Tate are engaged, and Garrett has left his uncertain and often dangerous life as private investigator for secure employment in his home city of TunFaire, capital of the
kingdom of Karenta, as a security specialist for the wealthy Tate
family's thriving manufacturing empire. This new-found peace is
shattered by the late-night arrival of several armed thugs who had
been hired by an unknown party to abduct Tinnie, followed by the news
that Garrett's long-time friend Morley Dotes, elven assassin and
underworld figure turned mostly-legitimate entrepreneur, is comatose
after being brutally attacked and left for dead in a late-night
ambush on the streets of TunFaire. Despite Tinnie's disapproval,
protests, and volcanic temper, along with Garrett's own desire to
leave the danger and economic insecurity of his old career as a
private eye behind him, he now delves back into TunFaire' s criminal
underworld to find out who is responsible for the attacks on his
fiancée and his best friend- and whether or not they're related.
TunFaire has settled down, too.
Karenta's decades' long war with its rival Venegeta, a devastating
conflict over silver mines (fuel for the magic of the
sorcerer-aristocrats who rule Karenta) that consumed whole
generations of young men, is over. The omnipresent racial tensions
that threatened to boil over into large-scale violence with the
war's end, when thousands of newly unemployed conscript soldiers were
thrust into a civilian society where many trades were dominated by
nonhumans after decades of economic adjustment to the lengthy and
often permanent absences of virtually all of its young human men,
have cooled a bit. The establishment of a more professional and less
corrupt police force by Deal Relway, the recently appointed commander
of the city watch, has brought an end to much of the overt
criminality that plagued the city and created an era of (comparative)
law and order.
To resolve the mystery, he'll have to
seek out the aid of his old ally the Dead Man, the 500-year old
corpse of a member of a powerful nonhuman race called the Loghyr
whose original occupant hasn't departed yet, and some other
acquaintances from his less reputable past. His investigation will
required him to face a cabal of corpse-stealing sorcerers and their
grotesque creations, mysterious political interference with his
investigation, corruption at high levels of TunFaire society, and,
hardest of all to confront, the knowledge that his duty to his old
friend may cost him the love of his life.
I greatly enjoyed Golden Latten
Bones and think it's an excellent addition to the Garrett series.
As always, Garrett's first-person narration and jaded sense of humor
is highly entertaining and is a huge part of what makes the story so
enjoyable. I liked the central mystery, though to a great extent
it's a backdrop- this book is, probably more than any other entry in
the series, about Garrett rather
than the case he's working on. The book is somewhat more sedentary
than usual, with Garrett doing less of the legwork for the case
himself- his circle of allies, sources, and friends has grown greatly
since the beginning of the series, and that comes into play here. The
story remains interesting, however, and there are some nice action
sequences as well.
The book is more character-focused than
its predecessors, and the book has a particular focus on how Garrett
and the people in his life have grown and changed- or how they
haven't- since we first met them. Barrett is noticeably off his game
when he first begins investigating after spending over a year in his
less demanding job working for the Tate family, and begins to wonder
if he's no longer cut out for the demands of his old career and
lifestyle. When he first moves back into his old residence- which his
assistant Pular Singe and long-time housekeeper Dean have continued
to use in his absence- so that he can keep an eye on the wounded
Morley, he's startled by just how much frailer the elderly Dean has
become. Singe, meanwhile, has grown remarkably since first meeting
Garrett. A member of a despised race called ratpeople, an unnatural
hybrid species created a few centuries ago in some sorcerer's bizarre
experiments, she has gone from living in desperate poverty under the
yoke of her thuggish elder brother and working as a tracker due to
her preternaturally sensitive sense of smell to working as the
manager of Garrett's office and financial affairs, has learned to
read and write (an uncommon skill in general and unheard of among
ratpeople), and speaks to Garrett as an equal.
I especially liked the portrayal of
Tinnie Tate. Tinnie has generally been portrayed as a short-tempered,
possessive, and frequently unreasonable person. And she still is, but
we see her in greater and more sympathetic depth here as someone
whose driving emotion is not anger or jealousy but fear, who knows
that her behavior is frequently unreasonable, self-destructive, and
threatens to drive away the very people she loves and is so afraid of
losing, but feels like she is so locked into that pattern of thought
and behavior that she can't stop. Cook's portrayal of this is very
effective, and rather poignant if you've known somebody like that
yourself.
The city of TunFaire remains one of my
favorite fantasy settings, taking many of the typical conventions of
fantasy- fairly widespread magic, a roughly medieval level of
technology, races like elves and dwarves- and creating something that
feels quite different from the typical fantasy world. It's
interesting to see how it, too, is changing, as society adjusts to
the end of the war, new inventions make large-scale manufacturing
more economically significant than it has ever been before, and
Relway's reformed city watch brings a previously unknown level of law
and order to the city- and is becoming a political force in its own
right. TunFaire is more peaceful than it used to be- though that's a
relative measure.
The overall tone of the story is more
upbeat than many of the previous Garrett books. The Garrett, P.I.
series has never been as dark as Glen Cook's Black Company
series, and Garrett himself is a fun character and narrator, but
nevertheless a number of the previous Garrett books have had a strong
sense of sadness or melancholy about them. There's some of that here,
too, but all in all the world seems brighter here than it often has
in the past.
Gilded Latten Bones is is very
strongly recommended for fans of the Garrett series, and I strongly
recommend the series as a whole (starting with Sweet Silver Blues)
for anyone who likes fantasy and is interested in something different
from the norm.
