Every time I read a book by Sean Stewart, I am reminded how good he is. This one, like many of his previous novels, uses fantasy (and in this case a bit of horror) to explore the main character and his relationship to the world. The main character is a perpetually depressed divorced dad trying to do the right thing by his daughter (who lives with her mom and stepdad). Unfortunately, he also sees ghosts, and they mess up his life, or give him an excuse to mess up his own life, maybe.

The book was a bit tough to find. AFAICT, Uncle Hugo's never had a copy in stock, but I picked it up at Powell's and read it in one day (yesterday). Update: I went to Uncle Hugo's earlier this week and they had a copy (finally).

So I started reading some of the reviews on Amazon for Night Watch. People are stupid. Here's a choice quote:

One of my pet peeves is when an author goes into great detail describing what some character is wearing -- the color, what type of fabric, the jewelry and what it's made of, etc. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I DON'T CARE WHAT THIS PERSON IS WEARING, GET ON WITH THE STORY.

Yeah, I hate that prose shit. Perhaps this person would prefer that novels be presented in an outline form:

• Winter and Emily talk
• Jen fights Claire
• Water Spider thinks
• ...

Yes, that'd be much better. Screw all that descriptive text. I want to find out what happens next. This is why there is so much artless genre fiction, because idiots buy it and think its better than real writing!

This is the second time I've read this book, and I think I liked it much better this time. It's biggest flaw is that it has a huge cast of characters, and it jumps between them constantly. This is cool because you get inside everyone's head, but it does break things up quite a bit, and sometimes a character disappears for many chapters until you almost forget about them.

But the writing is just amazing. Here's a passage that really caught my eye:

Dry tea scooped into the pot, rattling like rice falling on a tile floor. Floating Ant's stove got to its punchline and the little kettle shrieked with merriment. Floating Ant picked it up. Hot water, still laughing helplessly, tumbled into the teapot. Water Spider imagined the tea leaves unfurling, opening their arms to the hot water as to a lover's embrace.

And this is basically a throwaway passage not central to the plot! That's a heck of a way to say "Floating Ant made a cup of tea."

Sean Stewart's writing is always so beautiful, and he seems cares deeply about his characters, though he puts some of them through hell.

Interested readers should note that this book is a loose sequel to Stewart's Resurrection Man, which should be read before this one. Galveston follows.