'In the swirling sewers beneath Arkham, excavators uncover a crystalline formation that hints at dark events from the city’s past. As the discovery makes headlines, so too does a series of bizarre murders. With no leads, the Arkham police are always one step behind. Acting on a hunch, down-on-his luck former journalist Andy Van Nortwick reunites with adventurer Jake Williams and struggling filmmaker Maude Brion to unearth the truth. The trio know of the supernatural horrors that lurk beyond this world, and the reality haunts them. But time is running out and between them they must face their nightmares before the city of Arkham is lost to blood and chaos.'
Cult of the Spider Queen was one of my favourite books of last year, and it's still on top of the pile as my favourite entry in the Arkham Horror line; so when I saw that several of the characters from the book were going to be reuniting for another adventure I was very excited. Instead of the long and winding waters of the Amazon river and the dense forests that surround it, this book returns readers to Arkham, and takes you beneath the surface into the sewers beneath the city, where a mysterious artefact has been discovered, and a killer has the city on edge.
One of the things that really made Cult of the Spider Queen stand out amongst the other Arkham Horror titles was that it was set in a very different location, and that the book took on the feel of the old pulp adventure films like Creature From The Black Lagoon more than it did it's actual source material. With Sidor shifting the focus back to the streets of Arkham this book needed something to make it feel different. Luckily, by placing the vast majority of the action beneath the city streets it manages to not feel repetitive.
The story focuses on a strange crystal structure that's found beneath Arkham City when work is being done to expand and update the city's sewer systems. The crystal, which resembles a fang, isn't the only thing lurking in the sewers, as a mysterious killer has been using them to get around Arkham, dumping the bodies of their victims. Rex, one of the local reporters, has been looking into the case, but ends up getting arrested as the killer when he's caught underground near the fang.
When Rex is eventually released he runs into Andy Van Nortwick, who used to work at the same paper but was fired after a failed expedition to the Amazon, and a story about giant spider monsters.Andy convinces Rex to let him help, and the two of them set out to try and figure out where the strange crystal structure came from, and why it seems to be connected to the person performing the killings. Along the way they'll end up getting help from explorer Jake Williams, former film star Maude Brion, as well as a couple of smart street kids with a history of running up against the supernatural.
Lair of the Crystal Fang brings together a number of characters, some of whom appeared in Sidor's previous book, others who have appeared in a story in The Devourer Below, as well as some more characters fans of the games will recognise. It's kind of great to get to see these characters again, with most of them being stars in the previous Sidor book. We get to find out what happened to Andy when he got home (thrown out of his job as a laughing stock), what happened to Jake (lost his leg but is still healing), and what happened to Maud (got shut away in an asylum). It doesn't feel like many of them got a happy ending after their last adventure, and as such you don't really feel bad that they're getting drawn into something else, and that they might be in danger once again. Instead, you kind of see this as a second chance for them; one where they might finally come out on top.
The new characters that they get to team up with and work with compliment them well, with Wendy in particular bringing a lot of great energy into the mix. The new situation also feels like a fun evolution to what the characters went through before. The tightly confined waterways of the Amazon are replaces with the dark tunnels of the Arkham sewers, with them once again travelling along dangerous waters to find a deadly killer; though this time it's sewer water and a much more human killer.
The book also introduces a lot of new mysteries and gives readers some interesting new history for the city, as well as the various cults and supernatural groups that call it home. There are some really interesting moments where the cults, the criminals, and the politics of Arkham get to take centre stage and make it ends up making the city feel more alive and real than in many of the previous books. There's a sense that it isn't just a background for these spooky adventures, but a living, evolving city where all these different stories are happening in their own intersecting circles.
Lair of the Crystal Fang is going to be different to the previous Sidor entry in the series, just as that was different to the first. It gives readers a different perspective on Arkham, a different type of adventure, and different scares. Go into it knowing that you're going to get something new and you're going to have a great time with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment