re:mote voices

Title: John Constantine-Hellblazer: War Lord
Author: John Shirley
Publisher: Pocket Books

John Constantine has been living in an Iranian monastery, studying with the Blue Sheikh - who is rumoured to be over 400 years old and a magi of unrivalled ability. But even before the sheikh is murdered Constantine has outstayed his welcome. The maybe magician, maybe con-man has been approached by the "peace corpse", a group of restless spirits who are looking to do some good in the world before they move on. They want to recruit him, get him to prevent a world war, stop the summoning of a war god, and the murder of the sheikh is tied in somehow.

War Lord is the second John Constantine/Hellblazer novel by John Shirley. Despite a current run of media-tie-ins, John Shirley is an established and credible author. Having written both science fiction and horror novels over the years - being particularly influential in the cyberpunk scene. My copies of his novels City Come A Walking and Exploded Heart have introductions by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Regardless he is just one of a growing number of established authors who are taking on this kind of work.

Having read 4 novels by Shirley in the past I had a suspicion that he was actually the perfect choice for writing John Constantine novels. His first novel with the character was the film adaptation, something which made a clear departure from the comic book source material. Even with those departures, I had been kind of curious as to how a Shirley Constantine novel would read. Though I remained a little restrained, since film novels can often be a dubious endeavour. So when War Lord appeared as a second Hellblazer novel, I decided it was perhaps a better first step to take in that direction.

With War Lord Shirley makes some conscious references. He talks of alternate realities, which allows him to pass comment about this being the John Constantine of the comic, while there is the film version in another dimension. He also makes passing reference to a character called Jamie Ellis, which I would assume is an observation of those writers who have gone before him - Jamie Delano and Warren Ellis having done some of the most prominent Hellblazer material. In turn he also manages to work in a reference to Rudy Rucker, one of Shirley's peers from the early days of cyberpunk.

As a novel War Lord captures the tone of the comics well, with enough references across the history of the character to put Shirley's Constantine into context. Of course most comic series exist with a number of creative teams handling them, so the little shifts in character voice you get from a different writer are something that you get used to. The references to the lung cancer of the past and the recent Red Sepulchre graphic novel serve to smooth those out. The Red Sepulchre reference puts this novel into a recent point in the John Constantine story. While the war in Iraq, and the references to the possible flair up of war with Iran make it very much contemporary, even with that occult mysticism that comes with the territory.