{"id":1834,"date":"2014-02-03T22:17:23","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T22:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1834"},"modified":"2014-02-04T14:51:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T14:51:37","slug":"the-dirty-streets-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1834","title":{"rendered":"The Dirty Streets of Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dirty Streets of Heaven<\/em> by Tad Williams<\/h2>\n

The group met on February 3, 2014, to discuss The Dirty Streets of Heaven,<\/em> by Tad Williams. Ten\u00a0members attended. All had started the book, and 6 finished. Two members had read the second book\u00a0in this \u201cBobby Dollar\u201d trilogy, and three planned to do so. The third book (Sleeping Late on Judgment\u00a0Day<\/em>) is due out in 2014. Although Williams is an established and international best-selling author,\u00a0with 18 novels and two story collections, only one person had read any of his books before. Williams\u2019s first book, Tailchaser\u2019s Song<\/em>, has become a movie and (causing him to be known as \u201cthe cat guy\u201d for\u00a0a couple of years), it was followed by The \u201cMemory, Sorrow and Thorn\u201d classic fantasy series, and his\u00a0\u201cOtherland\u201d series spawned a computer game. The Bobby Dollar series is a sort of noir hardnosed-detective-fantasy combination, unlike anything he\u2019s done before.<\/p>\n

Bobby Dollar is an angel, assigned to Earth to work in human form. When a person dies, the soul is\u00a0immediately brought before a court to decide its fate. Bobby acts as Heaven\u2019s Advocate, assisted by the\u00a0soul\u2019s Guardian Angel. There are counterparts from the nether regions, and an impartial judge. (There\u00a0is an amusing skit on YouTube where Tad Williams plays the bartender of the angel bar and Bobby\u00a0Dollar explains how all this works to a young angel who has been assigned to work with him.) The plot\u00a0thickens when the court shows up but the soul doesn\u2019t. Neither side claims custody, but the soul has\u00a0to be somewhere. It must be that a splinter group is forming. It\u2019s apparent to many that forever in\u00a0heavenly bliss might be boring and consignment to burn in hell forever might be harsh, so might there\u00a0be a \u201cthird way?\u201d Where is this action-packed plot taking us?<\/p>\n

The group had mixed reactions to this book. A couple really enjoyed it, several thought it was OK but\u00a0not great, and some found it boring and the character unappealing. For example, one person read\u00a0two chapters, then began reading Charles Stross\u2019s rewrite and combination of the Family Trade series\u00a0(The Traders\u2019 War<\/em>, 2014) and didn\u2019t return to this one. One reader found the ending confusing. Some\u00a0liked the noir tone and others didn\u2019t. Another thought that the protagonist liked to hear himself talk\u00a0more than he should.<\/p>\n

A lot of discussion centered on specific aspects of the book compared with other authors who had\u00a0treated similar subjects (e.g. Liz Williams, author of Ghost Sister<\/em> and the Inspector Chen series, or Keith\u00a0Hartman\u2019s The Gumshoe, The Witch, and the Virtual Corpse<\/em>).<\/p>\n

It would be good to have a group consensus, but that didn\u2019t happen in this case. Sampling the skit and\u00a0serious reviews on YouTube and other sources might be the best guide as to whether or not you\u2019d choose this one.<\/p>\n

After the meeting, we enjoyed dinner at the Waterloo Ice House.<\/p>\n

— Tom Sciance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams The group met on February 3, 2014, to discuss The Dirty Streets of Heaven, by Tad Williams. Ten\u00a0members attended. All had started the book, and 6 finished. Two members had read the second book\u00a0in this \u201cBobby Dollar\u201d trilogy, and three planned to do so. The third book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}