The Naming of the Beasts brings a lot of the storylines in Mike Carey's excellent Felix Castor series to a close. I've seen in interviews that he plans to do at least one more, but if he stops here, the series will feel complete.
In one sense, it's a satisfactory conclusion. Asmodeus has been a thorn in Castor's side since the first novel, and a confrontation was bound to come. Carey makes Castor work hard for a chance, and the climactic showdown never feels cheap. Also, Carey's prose is as good as ever, making him pretty much the best writer I've read in the urban fantasy field. (Which I suppose is damning with faint praise, given that his competition is the likes of Jim Butcher; so I should say instead that he's one of best writers in the mainstream fantasy business. Not in the overdone purple prose sense of, say, Patrick Rothfuss, but more like a Raymond Chandler, with the deft strokes of characterization in just a few words, the occasional simile that's just right, and so on).
On the other hand, the plot feels a little mechanical, in a way that the other Castor books have managed to avoid. It felt a little like a video game -- Castor goes to Macedonia, and ends up with a seemingly irrelevant bit of junk, but it turns out to be useful against Asmodeus; then he meets with a guy whose secret seems worthless, but it turns out to be useful against Asmodeus, and so on.
On the third hand, Castor also has a set of run-ins with Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, and these are very well handled.
In the end, it's a book you just have to read if you've already read the other Castor books (and if you haven't, you should!), and my mild misgivings don't prevent it from being a very solid novel.
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