Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick

Before reviewing Laura Resnick’s Disappearing Nightly I need to give a quick explanation as to why despite having enjoyed the previous Esther Diamond adventures I’m only reading the first one now in 2012, rather then in 2006 when it was originally published.

Disappearing Nightly first came out in 2005, and was published by Luna. For various reasons Luna and Esther never really clicked, and she didn’t find another home until DAW picked up the series a few years later. The series has gone from strength to strength under DAW, beginning with Doppelgangster, continuing with Unsympathetic Magic and last years Vamparazzi (I believe the 5^th book; Polterheist, is due out later this year). However Laura Resnick didn’t get the publishing rights back to Disappearing Nightly until fairly recently, then DAW had to repackage it to fit with the rest of the series, and so it didn’t find it’s way to me until a couple of weeks ago.

I’d always been eager to read Disappearing Nightly, as although Esther quickly recapped the events from the book in Doppelgangster, this was where the actress met her friend, the 350 year old European magician Max Zadok, and her on again, off again love interest; Connor Lopez. Both Max and Connor are pretty major parts of Esther life and her adventures so seeing how they first came onto the scene is important for any fan of the books.

Esther was happily working as a wood nymph, understudying the lead actress, in an off Broadway (way off) production called Sorcerer! when the lead actress, a former teenie pop star with the ridiculous stage name of Golly Gee (Lopez refers to her as Gosh Darn at one point, and I didn’t buy his explanation that he was only joking), quite literally disappears. Because Esther is her understudy, and therefore gains from the disappearance she’s considered a suspect, and then she starts receiving warning notes, cryptically signed MZ.

Other people start disappearing, and before Esther can say abracadabra, she finds herself teamed up with Max, a team of highly enthusiastic drag queens, a conjuring cowboy and his perky daughter and a young banker who has been rail roaded into the financial industry by his family, when all he really wants to do is perform magic. They all think they’re helping. Lopez is of the opinion that what they’re doing is hindering his investigation and if he could find grounds he’d arrest the lot of them, except maybe Esther, who he wants to date.   

Because I’d already read the later books in the series I already knew who was behind the disappearances and roughly why, so the mystery of trying to work out whodunit wasn’t there in this one. It didn’t however detract from my enjoyment of the book. The fun of the Esther Diamonds is with Esther herself and the somewhat combative relationship she enjoys with Lopez. He was better drawn in this than I feel he has been in some of the later books, in this one he wasn’t afraid to make gentle fun of Esther and being openly disbelieving of her, not something he still does. Considering that some of the seemingly less likely things she suggests actually come to pass, this may be why he isn’t as skeptical of her now.

The books have a knack of introducing one off characters that intrigue me, this time it was Max’s boss, the Anglo Indian Lysander Singh from that well known hotbed of evil; Altoona, PA. He kept reminding me of the officious Nigel from The Watchers Council in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 5, Episode 12, Checkpoint. Oh yes, I know my Buffy the Vampire Slayer). It was highly amusing to watch Max and Esther simply ignore most of what he said and blunder on regardless. Like Lucky Battistuzzi (Doppelgangster) it’s unlikely he’ll appear again, but he is there waiting in the wings if the author decides he’s required.

The Esther Diamonds are a little hard to classify, they’re definitely urban fantasy and the Lopez/Esther relationship kind of strays into romance territory, although there’s not a lot of it. The author herself refers to them as comedic urban fantasy, so I’ll go with that, I kind of like it as sub genre classification actually.

I think I’ve said this with nearly every review I’ve done of the books, but no one seems to be paying attention to me, so I’ll close by saying it again. These books are simply screaming to be made into a TV show. Someone please make this happen!      

And they wonder why people shop online

Borders and Angus & Robertson down here in Australia are going through the same problems that they are everywhere else. Here they’re blaming it on online sales. I’m going to bring up a case in point and that may explain exactly why they’re not getting the business they want, at least from the growing community of SFF readers.

It’s not easy being an SFF fan in Australia. It never has been. You mention that you read the genre and you get blank looks most of the time. Once you try to explain you have to use something that has broken out of the genre to most people (eg: Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter) and then they either think you’re a role player or someone who’s never really grown up. I contest that Harry Potter is more than just a kids series, but I digress.

If something sells well enough, and by that I mean it has to best sell, then it may find it’s way into the mainstream stores, otherwise you have to visit one of the few speciality SFF stores, like Minotaur books in Melbourne. The only other way is to go online. I know I can buy e-books, and I do have an e-reader, but the range of SFF books available for legal download in Australia is depressingly limited, I can also go online and I do when I want something hard to get, but I’m a relatively old fashioned character and I like to go into a shop, find the book I want, pick up a solid copy of it and take it home with me.

Onto my specific example. One of the rising stars of urban fantasy is the prolific Seanan McGuire. I first encountered Seanan at Aussiecon, and seeing her there was one of the highlights of the event for me. After the con I started following her LJ and found out that she had 4 books in print (3 October Daye’s under her name, the 3rd was released just after the convention, and the 1st of the Newsflesh trilogy released under her pseudonym of Mira Grant. On that please read Feed, it’s awesome), so I went to hunt them out. I was lucky enough to snag a signed copy of Feed at Minotaur, but the Toby Daye’s were nowhere to be seen. In desperation I tried a chain, and lo and behold Dymocks in the city had all 3. Dymocks is the ONLY chain in this country that carries a decent SFF range and it has it’s own dedicated urban fantasy/paranormal romance section, at least the city branch does.

Being a relatively new kid on the block and steadily making her way as a mid list author Seanan is great about letting her readers know what she’s up to, especially with things like release dates. Her 4th October Daye novel; Late Eclipses was due out on March 3rd (that’s the US March 3rd, so it was probably March 4th down here in Oz), now I’m not stupid enough to expect it down here on day of release, although it has happened in the past with some titles, but I think a week is a respectable wait, if I’d ordered it online I would have well and truly had it. I tried Dymocks, nada, I tried Minotaur, no luck. My final port of call was Science & Swords. Science & Swords is this tiny little store in an out of the way arcade that only the truly dedicated even know about.

They had one copy left, as he rang it up the salesman remarked on how popular the series was and that they had already put in an order for more copies which should be arriving the following week, so why isn’t it and many other titles available for purchase in major Australian book stores within a week of release? I don’t care if it’s a publisher thing (Seanan’s publisher for the Toby Daye’s; DAW, is unlikely to have an Australian distributor, but considering that DAW is a subsidiary of publishing giant Penguin, which does have an Australian arm, these days, it shouldn’t be that hard to do) or a bookstore thing, but I’m getting fed up with it and I don’t believe I’m alone. If those at Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson wonder why they’re losing business to their online competitors this is one very good reason, the dreadful overpricing they engage in and the staggering lack of knowledge displayed by staff are 2 other reasons.

I thank the God of booklovers for places like Science & Swords. Thanks for listening. Now I’m off to devour Late Eclipses.