The CASFS Book & Media Social in April will be looking at 'Seal Team 666' by Weston Ochse, a well-known Arizona author who we recently lost, and March's book was also by an Arizona author who is no longer with us, Adam Niswander. I never met Adam but he was a big part of local fandom, as the owner of a specialist book store; the chair of MythosCon, a Lovecraftian convention; and the president of CASFS, a role currently occupied by, well, little old me. He also wrote books and I've picked up most of them over the years, so I took this as a good opportunity to dive into one.

'The Charm' is the first in a series of five books known as 'The Shaman Cycle', because they focus on a set of shamen, each from a different Native American tribe, all working together to battle supernatural evil. It seems to have been marketed as a horror novel, but later books switched to "supernatural thriller", even the second, 'The Serpent Slayers', which clearly has a Lovecraftian inspiration, including a Native American god named Yig, taken from 'The Curse of Yig', a story by Zealia Brown Reed that was heavily rewritten by H. P. Lovecraft himself before publication in the legendary 'Weird Tales' magazine in 1929.

Frankly, the best aspect of the book is the treatment of Native Americans, which is as unusual as it is welcome. It's a couple of white men who trigger the plot, not deliberately but through their ignorance. Don Hunnicutt is a third-year archaeology student at Arizona State University and he has discovered something strange out where they're building a new freeway, so he has his professor, Jack Foreman, drive out to take a look. This was released in 1993, so is newer by far than many of the books I review at the Nameless Zine, but it's forever in Arizona time, so this new freeway way out in the desert is the west side of the 101, now firmly part the sprawling urban metropolis.

What immediately strikes Foreman as odd is that, while Hunnicutt has clearly stumbled across a Native American site, the pictographs are from the languages of multiple tribes, which makes no sense because they never worked together like this would have required. Clearly it's a mystery, a historical site worthy of much investigation. So naturally they just open it and let out an ancient demon, which manifests as an incredibly strong wind and promptly starts killing people, starting with Hunnicutt but leaving Foreman untouched, for reasons he doesn't understand but which is completely obvious to us. He's picked up the charm of the title.

Enter the Native American shamen, twelve of them, most of them very old and some infirm. All of them just know that the demon has been released, even though they generally had no idea at this point that there was a demon confined. That happened long ago with the story passed down only in legend. However, they're all spiritually connected so they just know that it's now free and that it must be contained once more, which means that all of them promptly set out for the Salt River reservation to take part in what they already know will be another Great Gathering to take care of business and fix what the white men did.

Well, almost all of them know, because they're shamen, medicine men, witches, whatever name their particular tribe has adopted, and, while most are elderly shamen who have been there and done that, there are also a couple of younger characters stepping up to the plate and they help to keep this relatively fresh.

One of them, Gordon Smythe, has particular resonance because he has a heck of a story arc. He's the great-great-grandson of the Navajo yataalii, or singer, He-Who-Walks-in-Wisdom, also known as Archie Smythe. Archie is 108 years old and the key to the Great Gathering, but he also lives in a New Mexico pueblo called Chaco Canyon and he knows that the wind demon is about to destroy it. So he prepares Gordie, known as Thoughts-Never-Stop, to do what he's not going to able to do on account of being soon dead, and sends him off. Soon afterwards, all two thousand people in Chaco Canyon are dead, Archie included. So, not a lot of pressure on young Gordie, huh?

One angle I could see a lot of readers disliking is the fact that we follow each of these shamen to the Great Gathering and their stories are very similar. However, one angle I really liked is exactly that, because, while they're all very similar, none of them are exactly the same. Niswander is very careful to ensure that these tribes are given firm delineation from each other. Not only do these shamen live in different places, but they have different languages, different names and different greetings, let alone different ways of doing pretty much anything; lots of the joy here is in seeing the results of Niswander's research. This is a book in which Indians are not just Indians.

Most of these shamen are real characters, especially Tom Bear of the Pima, Pasquel Quatero of the Zuni and Rattle of the Havasupai. One is two-spirited, because he's not just George Buck, war named Red Cloud, of the Apache; his body also contains the spirit of Geronimo. Yes, that one. It's a deepening factor that brings a whole different level of culture clash into proceedings. Pasqual gets some of that too, by flying to Phoenix and finding himself in conversation with a little white girl who's sitting next to him, which has all the potential to go horribly wrong but goes very right instead.

The catch is that they're primarily but not entirely men, because, while Niswander is very careful to treat a wide variety of Native Americans with respect and cultural identity, he clearly has zero idea how to extend that to women. There aren't many women in this book, but there are a few and they're what date it.

Never mind Bucky Reese, a Vietnam vet and Charlie Manson wannabe, literally summoning to him a raven-haired runaway called Shoshone for his sexual gratification, even the women of substance are treated horrendously. One numbers among the shamen, Lotus Farley of the Tohono O'odham, isn't in the story for any sort of character but for physicality. She's "absolutely, stunningly, heart-breakingly beautiful" and, of course, her powers as a healer are sexual in nature and so she's just as liberated as they come. The other is Dierdre Carroll, new and ambitious weather girl for KTAX-FM, which translates to sleeping with meteorologist Matt Sharp as a career path.

The bottom line is that, while Niswander's respect for Native Americans is unusual and palpable, his treatment of women was ridiculously misogynistic even in 1993. Frankly, it wouldn't feel right even if this were 1893. The other catch to the book is the titular MacGuffin, which is, of course, an important part of how the wind demon was contained centuries ago and therefore must be part of how it's contained again right now. However, it's hardly treated with as much respect by Jack Foreman as its creators are by Niswander, making us wonder how useless an archaeologist he is. He's the epitome of the cliché, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

Then again, white men don't come across well in this book at all, not just through what Hunnicutt and Foreman do, but as underlined in the difference between the two cops who end up involved. One is Det. Greg Johnson, of the Tempe police, who's completely secular and thus has no time for any of the shenanigans the shamen get up to. However, the other is Sgt. Ed Twohats Redfield, of the Navajo Tribal Police, who flies in from New Mexico to liaise, and he's far more open to things he knows are beyond him. The two are a mismatched pair but that helps their relationship.

I liked this book, though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't if I had been born female, but it does feel like a first novel. It was published by Integra Press, a small publisher I believe was run by Niswander, so the editorial side was probably not as ruthless as it should have been. Parts of it flow well, while others feel a little clumsy in the way that first novels often are. There's enough here to enjoy and to point the way forward to a series. As I mentioned, there are five, even though it was intended to run to thirteen, and this was the last one I picked up, so I'll work through the rest in time. ~~ Hal C F Astell