Habeas Corpses (Halflife Chronicles #3)

Habeas Corpses (2003) is the third fantasy novel in the HalfLife Chronicles series, following

Dead On My Feet

. In the previous volume, Chris acted as a stand-in for the Baron Samedi and rescued most of the loa captured by Lilith, the mother of demons. He was rescued from a BioWeb reception by civil war revenants and was pronounced Doman of the New York City demesne after taking down the previous head.

Chris refused to return to the Seattle demesne and went home to his riddled house with Deirdre, J.D., and Kurt. Lupe appeared and was not pleased. Chris was compelled to tell her about most of the events. She was calming down, but then Jenny used in the bedroom shower.

In this novel, Christopher Csejthe — pronounced Chay-tay — is having problems. Assassins have been showing up regularly, probably from other factions in the New York demesne. He is having prophetic dreams. And the dead in the cemetery next door are becoming restless about the nightly movie fare; they want Ally Beale instead of monster movies.

Lupe is very suspicious of the continuing presence of Deirdre as his security chief. The ex-vampire has a very alluring body, especially with the new suntan. Chris is very attracted to her by a combination of lust and blood hunger, but has remained true to Lupe despite the attraction.

Then Chris has an unusual email. It showed an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs and then pulls Chris into a three-dimension illusion of an unknown room and an elderly man. Doctor Pipt introduces himself and declares that he had spent his professional life looking for the secrets of immortality. He wants some blood from Chris.

Meanwhile, Deirdre answers the doorbell and finds a beating heart in a glass jar on the doorstep. Nobody is anywhere nearby. So how does the heart keep beating without its bodily support? Chris suspects that Doctor Pipt knows!

In this story, Chris calls Stefan Pagelovitch in the Seattle demesne to ask about Theresa Kellerman’s head. He discovers that it is no longer in the western demesne. Someone from the New York demesne has taken it back east.

Chris finally finds the right time to ask Lupe to marry him. Lupe accepts and wears his grandmother’s ring, but tries to talk him out of a large marriage in New York. Vampires just don’t marry Lupen.

It is a dark and stormy night, perfect for a half-vampire to buy to a wedding band for a werewolf. As they are shopping, two strangers walk in and pull guns. They rob the place and then try to take Chris as a hostage.

Chris concludes that the whole ploy is really another assassination attempt. Mama Samm and Olive Purdue ambush the gunmen and release Chris and Lupe. Unfortunately, both are shot and Lupe seems to be dying. Mama Samm takes them to the Gator-man, a traiteur in the bayous.

Later, Deirdre seduces Chris into taking some of her blood and Lupe walks in to see the transaction. Lupe walks out and leaves the house. Chris packs up and leaves for New York City. Kurt Szekely meets him at LaGuardia airport.

This tale leads Chris into a hotbed of intrigue, backstabbing — literal and otherwise — and rumor. The vampire clans in New York are even worst than elsewhere. Kurt has been steward for Chris over these scheming, untrustworthy and predatory groups while he stayed in Louisiana. Now Chris gets the full effect.

Chris has new experiences in New York, including being shot in the heart, becoming ghost-like, and meeting a variety of nature spirits. He doesn’t exactly live through those times, but still recovers at the end. Enjoy!

Recommended for Simmons fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of preternatural creatures, supernatural spirits, and tangled romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Simmons’ third foray into the satirical fantasy genre beats out its predecessor in terms of staying on point, plot-wise, and not being eye-rolling-ly inappropriate in the timing of the protagonist’s erudition. However, the first book of this series stands out as the best of the bunch.

If you want something more cerebral than bodice-ripping, this series is definitely the way to go. However, be forewarned that Simmons’ editor seems to have taken a hiatus, given the success of the first book, witnessed by the increasing girth of each ensuing entry. While it’s a plus that the author has done his research, it’s definitely a minus for the author to beat his readers over the the head with the painful minutiae of all he has gleaned. Seriously, sometimes less is more. (Or even “brevity is the soul of wit”, to throw one back at the quote-happy author.) A more experienced writer would, perhaps, have dropped in an illusion to the mythological framework upon which he was embroidering, rather than giving us all the specs which accompany it. (If we’re that curious, we’ll look it up ourselves.)

And, yes, I _do_ understand the gag of inappropriately timed discourses on philosophical topics – but, you’ve done it before. Let it die, even if the protagonist is seemingly unkillable. Some things just need to be laid to rest.

All-in-all, not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it definitely tried my patience at points and challenged my OCD need to finish things. The author would have done better to have chosen one clean plot and stuck to it, rather than rambling all over the cultural and historical landscape in order to show off the author’s own accumulated treasure-trove of knowledge. (This one book alone could easily have been broken down into two, if not three, more tightly-paced novels instead of crammed into one massive, unfocused work.)

If his plot-pacing improves and the characters actually develop a bit, then Simmons is on his way to being a power-house force to be reckoned with in the fantasy genre (he can do witty dialogue like nobody’s business). If not, then he’ll remain a pleasant, curious diversion in an over-crowded, highly competitive genre.

Chris Csejthe is caught between a rock and a hard place. He is the Doman of the New York demesne, but he prefers to leave running the day-to-day business to his seneschal Kurt while he lives in Louisiana and tries to survive the repeated assassination attempts – one of which included silver bullets, making his blood toxic to both his girlfriend Lupe and to any vampires who may try to drink it. Also, he has started to receive strange “gifts” from a man calling himself Dr. Pipt – including a still-beating heart, kidneys, etc.

Eventually he has no choice but to go to New York and try to straighten out the mess there and stop all the assassination attempts. While there, another assassination attempt comes way too close to succeeding, knocking him out of his body and on a really strange journey among the dead before finally facing up to Dr. Pipt – who began his strange trials in reaching immortality in Nazi Germany – and who now believes he only needs Chris’ blood to achieve it.

Simmons likes to play with language and his characters have a ball with puns and pop culture references. There is one instance where Lupe and Deidre get into an argument about which is tougher – Buffy or Anita Blake. These sorts of things are what make the Halflife Chronicles such fun books. Although they are frequently dark and Csejthe is prone to bouts of despair overall the books manage to maintain a darkly funny tone. I would definitely recommend this book – and the rest of the series – to anyone who enjoys a well-written magical reality novel, paranormal thriller, etc. Honestly, I’m not certain exactly how to quantify these books – but they are VERY good. Get out there and buy them!

This is not the best one of the four books in this series. Here our hero takes on cloned Nazis hiding in a mountain and plotting to take over the world and defeats them with the assistance of the Wendigo and other native American allies, and the NSA didn’t notice? Simmons introduces some nice ideas like ‘bloodwalking’ where the hero can take over another body by jumping in through their blood if they have a wound of any sort. Once again he shows off his research skills by having his hero spouting needless reams about the Nazis and their experiments. The book is at its best when the hero is interacting with the other vampires at the end and the way he deals with them was new and inspired. Only buy it if you’re a fan of the earlier two.

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