Half-Resurrection Blues (2015) by Daniel Jose Older

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Half-Resurrection Blues (2015)

by Daniel Jose Older

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 19/26

New York: 96/103

  Half-Resurrection Blues is the first pick in Daniel Jose Older's fantasy-genre series, Bone Street Rumba.  I had to read it on the native Libby app because Older has some kind of exclusive deal with Amazon which seems to prevent one from checking out E-books from the library and reading them on your Kindle.  This book was another reminder of how much I prefer science fiction to fantasy.  What makes fantasy so uninteresting to me is that ANY fantasy scenario is just a stand in for human emotions and characters, so why not spare us the sad vampires and angry werewolves and write about human characters instead.  

  This book is about a half living/half dead Latino who is working as a kind of agent for a council of the dead that operates in New York City.  The entire book has heavy Brooklyn vibes, and from that perspective it is a good fit for the 1,001 Novels project.  Otherwise though, it was a forgettable work of death-obsessed fantasy for me.