Angel

MONOLITH Book Review

onolith takes you on a 24-hour whirlwind, demonic adventure true to the spirit of Angel and its characters. It begins much like a teaser for the television series were the reader is immediately thrust into the unwitting actions of a struggling actress’s attempt to stave off her has-been career to discovering that she is actually the pawn of a much larger scheme by the demon Sehjenkhai to, once again, bring down the Apocalypse upon our hero and let demons rule by conquering the earth. The concept and idea of a massing army from an alternate dimension while the host demon aligns his evil plan with Angel’s reality is much akin to the series finale where in the ultimate battle, if our heroes don’t win, the world - as we know it - will end and be lost to the demon race.

This story is set in the fourth season of Angel between the episodes "Spin the Bottle" and "Apocalypse Nowish". It is first Angel novel from author, John Passarella since Avatar but it is packed with over 320-pages of non-stop action from intricately detailed fight scenes to a suspenseful chase between Connor and a demon warrior named Rrjk, and culminating with a enthralling, nail-biting ending as the seconds count down and the world literal falls away under Angel’s feet. Add to that a pair of demonic Khaipuhr canines, the chance to revisit with Cordelia, and what reader would want anything more? Well, while it’s wonderfully refreshing to see Cordy once again in the mix and working for the white hats, the Gunn/Fred/Wesley dynamic is also present but it is the Angel/Connor, father/son friction that embodies the essence of this story while helping to move our characters ever forward in their predestinations.

MONOLITH THE REVIEW

For the average Angel-verse reader the ’name game’ won’t be as obvious as it may be for the advanced trivial buff (no pun intended). The main fem-fatale of Monolith is Rebecca Wade, an aging actress trying to hold on to her youthful career and maintain the grand stardom she once possessed. This is very reminiscent of the Season 1 episode, "Eternity" where the main character of ’Rebecca’ Lowell, a 20-something actress in a now fading career and is willing to become a vampire via Angel to maintain her youth. Ms. Wade’s acting rival, although mentioned only briefly at the beginning of the story is named ’Kendra’. For Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, the island-esque Slayer, Kendra, who was killed by Drusilla, is still very vivid in fans memories. And Finally, pushing the limits of the ’name game’ we have KTLA’s reporter Sarah Swanson, it’s 6-degrees of Buffy separation as we tie in Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kristy Swanson. As you’ll see in our interview with John, it’s a small world in the Whedon-verse.

On the very good of the story, Rebecca tools with the dark side but who’s tooling who? Right off we get a twist in the action; bad guy has his own agenda and she’s just a pawn in a plan to throw over the world and restore demons back to this reality. John has an uncanny talent for nailing each character’s voice, a true gift among writers in tie-in media. Some authors are stronger in one character than others but John had a very nice handle on just about everyone in Monolith. His only weak link, if he indeed has one, might be Fred who was a still a bit more quirky at this stage in the series although she was starting to come into her own emotional strength. There were maybe a few too many "Father" and "Son" exchanges between Connor and Angel in regards to their dialogue. Several would have been sincere depending on the moment and events taking place, but some, especially coming from Connor, would have been more sarcastic. Although the point of Monolith is to help show the bridging gap and the bond slowly growing between Angel and Connor, the genuine efforts of Connor, sometimes didn’t carry across the page.

Again, anyone who is a fan of Angel will be familiar with all the ins and outs of its characters; the whys and what fors which have taken place over the season of this amazingly intricate series, but writers recap theses main events to make sure the reader understands the emotional backstory of the characters in regard to what is presently happening before them. Such is the case for Cordelia and her rise from Sunnydale’s ’Queen C’ status to an L.A. woman with a cause, Connor’s teen years in Qour’Toth with Holtz, his attraction to Cordelia and the hatred he maintains for his father, as least for his demonic side. Monolith devotes many pages to reacquainting the reader with these specifics, some of which may or may not so relevant to the importance of the story. I’d much rather see these elements touched on and then take the reader deeper into their events to stress the undercurrent their characters are now experiencing because of them. Connor was forced to grow up in a demonic dimension and Holtz convinced him that his true father, Angel, was evil because of his past as Angelus. By telling us exactly something Holtz may have done or said to make Connor feel this way would have given us something new to what we already know and these elements could be more reflective. But this is a rich story full of emotions and undercurrents that carry the action past the drama and into the relationships of these characters. Even when you think the battle has been won, hold on to your GTX seats because the final 50-pages rivals any episode of Angel you’ve even seen!

I give Monolith, 4 out of 5 Stakes!

NOT FADE AWAY

This past weekend CoA had the pleasure of sitting down with John Passarella in the casual setting of Copperfields near Philadelphia, and while the rain drizzled relentlessly outside on this cool June day, the warm and casual conversations inside were brimming about vampires and demons taking over the world. Of course, before we could even be seated, we swapped opinions of the Angel series finale that had just aired a couple weeks prior.

"When it ended, I didn’t think they all died," John professed, "I’m so used to them getting out of one Apocalypse after another that I didn’t necessary assume that this Apocalypse is the one that does them in. You can take from it what you want, if there’s never another TV movie then you can end it that way, but it leaves the door open so that those kind of things could happen, the army of Chosen come, or Buffy shows up, or some how they survive the battle." John also confided, "I never believed that Fred was really dead. And the more they said her soul’s destroyed, she’s completely gone, I’m thinking, ’They’re lying, that’s not true, they’re just saying that,’ he laughed. "The show has gotten so used to incredible things happening to the characters, I mean, Angel went to hell for awhile, and he came back," he joked. "The one thing they had that was important I thought was they went out with some closure - maybe not as much as we would have wanted - but with Lorne leaving the group finally, reaching his breaking point, with Wes dieing or apparently dieing and realizing that Fred really was dead. Who knows if her soul was really destroyed, how much was she lying to him at the end, how much was real. I think each fan can decide for themselves."

John also provides a few thoughts regarding Angel’s one true love and reality. "I thought in retrospect Buffy had a more upbeat ending, but she’s really looked bad since that point because we’d see her as reflected through Angel; as a no-show, as frivolous. And maybe that’s true or not but we’re seeing the echoes of what’s she’s doing or not doing and you’d like to think that would be different," he says. "But then again it’s real world, because she’s [Sarah Michelle Gellar] off filming a Japanese horror movie and she can’t be on the show so they have to work around that. You’d like to think that if it were novels that all that stuff could be perfectly done, bring the characters in when you need them and not when their schedules allow them to come back."

MONOLITH THE INTERVIEW

You never know where a writer gets the spark for an idea that ignites a novel, but for John the process for Monolith seemed to work hand-in-hand, and then took on an unlife of its own. "Generally ’horror’ is always this isolated thing," John explains, "most people don’t know it exists; this is a secret in a small town or something, and I kind of treated Angel that way in Avatar. But once [the series] did the whole storyline with the Beast, the blotting out of the sun and making newscasts; the whole city obviously knows the sun is being blotted out, it’s no longer a secret in the closet. That made me think, ’I can open this up into a more public, horrific event.’ That’s when I thought about having this monolith appear in Hollywood and what it does to the people in the city rather than just on the small group of people who know about it." When suddenly a huge monolith appears on Hollywood boulevard, it’s an instant tourist attraction for its unwitting victims. "One of the subplots is they think a movie producer is doing it as a publicity stunt for his new horror movie." John admits, "I thought that would be the natural, cynical reaction to that crowd out there at first. But then I started to think about what’s the symbolism of this monolith; it’s an obstacle, something standing in the way, it’s an idol that ancient people may have worshiped. Then I took that theme to see how it resonated with the characters and I saw Connor as idolizing Holtz, especially after he had died, and demonizing Angel unfairly, in some respects. And then I started seeing these obstacles and idolizations with other characters - with Wes and Fred - and who I could play that theme through all the characters, even with Lorne and Cordelia, idolizing the entertainment industry."

Oddly enough, John didn’t realize how similar the Rebecca arc was to the character in ’Eternity’ of Season 1. "Not consciously, maybe subconsciously," he confesses, "I only watch the episodes once, so the last time I was the episode is when it aired. Rebecca just popped into my head because in Wither, the three witches area Sarah, Rebecca and Elizabeth." He confides to us that Kendra was named after one of his biggest fans, "I actually used her whole name. She worked at Walden Books and she made Wither an employee’s pick. I’ve done that in a lot of my books. In Avatar I killed off the three bookstore employees at the Independent Bookstore where I do all my launch events, I used their names, and they even have in the store, ’We all die in Avatar.’ I even have a contest on my website now to have a fan’s name be used in my books." But when it came to Sarah Swanson, the KTLA reporter, John just smiled that his inside joke was discovered, "That was intentional, I took both of their first names. That one I did on purpose!"

In Monolith, Wesley takes about Janus, the Roman God of Change, and if you’re going to have your characters talk like they know what they are talking about, you need to do a little demon research yourself. "It’s as precise as I can find it," explains John, "I knew about the God Janus and it was double faced and I thought I could use that — chicken or egg, I think the monolith had two faces once I decided that it was going to remind Connor of Angel and then I started to think of other things that people might assume it related to and the God Janus was one of them. So then I went online and did some research on the details about Janus, I found out some things that I didn’t know of the top of my head, like the different things that Janus stood for." John continues on the word usage for the monolith, "I intentionally had Wes call the monolith ’the megalith’ and I had Fred mirror him in that usage; it was a subtle thing to make Gunn jealous. It’s not intentionally mentioned but it’s like she’s mimicking Wesley and on the subconscious level that might piss off Gunn. The editor wanted to change them all to monolith. Megalith to me was more precise but more of a archaic term, so I wanted to have Wes be the more precise in speech, using it, and have Fred mimic that and once I told the editor that I was playing a psychological thing subconsciously between the characters then she said ok." The review commented on the outstanding job John does with the characters voices and explained his processes for nailing them. "I wanted to put my mind back at the beginning of Season 4 and I had all the video tapes, and Andrea [John’s wife] had missed the entire season - I kept telling her Angel Season 4 was kick-ass. Angel, every week would end and you would say, ’What?’ your jaw would hit the table," he laughs. "Some people didn’t like the season because of what they did with Cordelia, but I thought it had a free-wheeling, anything goes kind of appeal to it. So I went back and watched the whole 22-episodes in a couple days. I had a notepad, and every time someone spoke and I thought, ’That really sounds like him’, I’d write that line down. So if I was doing a Gunn scene I would read all the Gunn lines I had written down just to hear him back in my voice again. And btw, after Andrea watched Season 4 she said, ’Why didn’t you tell me this was so good?’ "

When you’ve taken a character, like Angel, into a precarious situation and you’ve built up this great tension but then the reader knows he can’t die and will eventually have to get out, or save the day, this can frustrate a writer, but the challenge is trying to come up with unique scenarios where it’s the excitement factor that will hold the reader to the story. "That’s one of the things," John agrees, "especially when I talk to aspiring writers, I say there are pluses and minuses to writing these kinds of books because if you’re a new writer, some of it’s already there for you; the characters are already developed, they already have their voices, they already have a setting you just need to tell an original story. "I think it’s just natural to get caught up in the story. And maybe you know that they’re not going to die, but you don’t know how they win." Then the flip side is, of course, that you have these limitations that you can’t kill off these characters unless it’s an alternate universe type of story." He continues, "But I do my own series, the Wendy Ward series, and obviously I’m not going to kill off my main character in that either. I found myself in the third book having a lot of story time with the character who might die. The reader might not know if this person is safe or not. In Avatar I had more leeway because there were three main characters so I was able to bring in more of my own. With seven players here to deal with you don’t have as much room to bring in other characters but I think it’s just natural to get caught up in the story. And maybe you know that they’re not going to die, but you don’t know how they win; you don’t know how they stop this." John admits, "It’s a lot of fun for me to play with these characters and use them in a fresh story and when you’re watching the show, I think what helps the reader maybe subconsciously is that these same characters die, like Jenny Calendar died, and Anya dies at the end of Buffy and Cordy dies. And maybe in the back of your mind they don’t feel as safe as you’re used to in this show where they hit the reset button. Every show on TV where everyone is safe is different from Angel and Buffy where you’re not sure know who’s safe." In regards to the backstory provided, John tells us, "I thought that the Angel/Connor relationship was so important to the story and to this book, that I had to assume that not everyone who read it would know the entire history, people might have seen a couple episodes and I really wanted to lay out what had happened. That there has been this betrayal, and Angel missed out on his whole childhood. That one I knew I had to keep, the other ones I felt I had to go into enough to have it make sense. Since I was playing the whole Gunn/Wesely/Fred triangle I thought it was important that we understand why she’s in this tense relationship with Gunn and why there’s new hope for Wesley to move in. I want it to be fresh so that the reader can just keep going with the story and not have to scratch their head and wonder why."

The ending of Monolith is amazing and where most novels are action-packed throughout and then pitter out at the end, Monolith just took off and the final 40-pages are just pure adrenaline. "One thing that I liked - I probably shouldn’t give it away [and we won’t either] trying to come up with that they had to open both sides, that kind of came to me in a flash. I thought I could cut before you know what he does to solve that problem. I wanted [Angel] to say, ’Wes, you figure out how to stop this, I’ll worry about opening it.’ And that was one of the moments where you felt like the story was almost taking control of itself. I gradually thought I’ll have them be on the opposite side, and then I thought of the spiral staircase, and then suddenly the staircase became DNA and then it was like Angel and Connor are related. So things like that just started clicking into place," he said. "There are moments when the story takes over like that. I just read a quote, this one writer said, ’When a character says or does something unexpectedly that’s when you have to take your hands off and let the characters, that’s when they come to life.’ So when you hit those moments in the book where a character has an idea you didn’t have, ’Oh yeah, that’s a great idea, you should do that,’" he jokes. "When that happens, that’s a great feeling. That’s one of the best things about writing, when the story reveals itself and pops open like that." There’s a final passage in the book where Angel gets to reflect for a minute on his relationship with Connor, as a father himself, John could have used his own sons as inspiration. "Not specifically with my sons, but because of these books I was dealing with a specific moment in that season and you’re not allowed to change the character relationship, can’t change more then they changed in the season, and it almost became a moment where Angel looks at repairing that relationship as the same kind of ongoing process as the battle itself." John says, "The whole theme of the series is to keep on fighting, well he knows this has been lost, but he’ll repair it as long as it takes and this is one step in that process."

Along with the end of Angel, the series, as with the Angle comics, fans might also see the ending of the novels. "I don’t think there are any more planned after this publishing season," John explains, "I think Jeff Mariotte might have the last one. I went onto the WB’s bulletin board for Angel and there were almost 900,000 posts and I thought there could be a lot of people here who have no idea there are books. Because from my own market research and bookstores when I do signings, people come to me who are fans of the show and have no idea there are books. Or they’ll just assume the books are a TV show written in book form and not an original story." Writers really need the fans support tight now, "Because with the show going off the air, and Buffy’s off the air, interest will wane and sales will dip and they’ll just say it’s not worth while to keep them going. So I thought let’s try to find new some readers for them, people who are going to miss the show and will turn to the books to get stories. Now and then reading one, you’re just caught up in the experiences of these characters that you love all over again." John admits, "Just because Buffy and Angel are both gone now, the spotlight is off the Whedon-verse and it’s going to be harder to keep that alive and I think they are in real jeopardy. Where do the fans goes? Are they going to stay? You have a similar situation with your website, what are you going to do with your website? It’s a little bit of the unknown dealing with this. The StarTrek books survive because there has always been a new version of Star Trek series out to keep the universe alive. Well, we don’t have that unless there’s a new Spike series in the offing. We don’t have that to keep that blood flowing. I hope people like the book, I think it was my strongest. I really felt like everything really came together, the characters jelled, the story jelled, the themes all came together."

John will certainly we working on more exciting novels and horror fans don’t have too far to look for something witchy!, "Wither’s Legacy is the third book in the Wendy Ward series, " he tells us, "I started a new supernatural series, the working title right now is Shimmer, that is going to start out as a trilogy. This new series has multiple characters and multiple ages so that I might have more flexibility with the types of stories I can do with an older character, a middle-aged characters, a teenage character and have them be the focus. I have an unrelated supernatural thriller coming out next October, right now it’s called Kindred Spirit, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep that title, but that’s a stand-along thriller, kind of a ghost-possession story." Outside his love for writing, there is something else very close to John’s heart, his family, and the second annual Matthew’s Mile fundraiser that happens September 18th, 2004 in Logan Township, New Jersey. It’s a 2-mile walk to help raise money in the research and cure for children with brain tumors. The First Annual Matthew’s Miles Walkathon was a great success raising over $20,000 for brain tumor research funded by the American Brain Tumor Association. In 2001, at the age of seven, John’s son Matthew was diagnosed with a very aggressive tumor. Matthew underwent a seven-hour surgery during which the neurosurgeon was able to safely remove over half of his tumor. The prognosis gave him six to nine months, which meant he would not see his 8th birthday. The Matthew’s Miles walk is in celebration of John’s son’s life and 11th birthday this coming September.