The title of Rob Roger’s novel, Devil’s Cape, refers to a fictional city in Louisiana, a neighbor to New Orleans. Devil's Cape has earned its moniker of "Pirate Town" by a long history of crime, violence and corruption dating from its founding (by dread pirate St. Diable) to the present day. The story recounted is a complex one. The first quarter of the novel is dedicated to presenting the character of the city as well as some of its colorful characters, including the latest crime lord, the masked businessman who calls himself the Robber Baron. In addition, we meet a carnival of murderers and several other people bearing supernatural abilities. Did I say supernatural? Perhaps superhuman is the more appropriate word: these folks are budding superheroes and villains.

All of the many years of build-up lead through “Today” and the days following. “Today” is marked by an event of enormous magnitude, a series of deaths that just about rock the entire world. Afterwards, only a handful of people seem capable of finding justice for this momentous act. A woman whose father was murdered many years ago finds herself with a yearning for revenge and enough knowledge of superscience and technology to make her impossible goal a reality. A pair of twins, blessed or cursed with strange abilities, find themselves at odds over their extended Greek family member's business, which of course involve dealings with the infamous Robber Baron.

A street tough turned psychiatrist discovers that his whole world is not quite as orderly and logical as it seems, when an old hallucination is revealed to have very real roots. These disparate characters soon unite (in proper superhero fashion) to wage a sort of war against the darkest elements of Devil's Cape. However, this world is no four colored place where people cannot die, but tries to evoke the more gritty qualities of works by such comic book/graphic novel luminaries as Alan Moore (Watchmen), Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns), J. Michael Straczynski (Rising Stars), et. al.

The writing is quite good. The characters are layered and intriguing, the setting is well defined, the supernatural and the paranormal powers and their uses are imaginative, and the language is of that "invisible" style, which communicates without calling attention to itself.  Rogers is a gifted storyteller, and the tale he weaves is one that probes the darker corners of its subject matter as well as the hopeful, inspirational ones.

However, it does not delve quite so deeply into the darkness as this reader might have hoped. This work does not fully explore the questions it raises. Yes, the novel plays with darkness, yet it draws the classic hard line delineation between good and evil, right and wrong. It does not present many shades of gray, but hearkens back to the golden age of comics where the "good guys" always act in a certain way. Why? Because they are heroic.

This resonates most clearly in the choice for the novel's alternate universe to exclude the impact of Katrina. While this reviewer tries to remain impartial to real world details while reading, the lack of even a single reference to that hurricane and its profound effects on both the area and its people made things seem a little... off.

Certainly there is madness to be found in these pages, and pain is no stranger here, but the story is ultimately a reassuring one. By the end of the book, a few of the major questions are resolved, but there are enough loose threads to feed another book or two (this reader suspects... wait for it... trilogy!). While those books, if they are given half the care of this, will undoubtedly be fine reads, thrilling stories of paranormal powered people trying to find justice in an essentially corrupt city, they have yet to venture down the darkest roads to which they aspire (see those authors above).

Have I been jaded by reading too much Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Frank Miller, Michael Millar, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, etc. etc.? This is a viable question. However, to review a book for a site like Horror Reader, I have to look at the material through a certain kind of lens.

Make no mistake:  Devil's Cape is a well told tale, a fine dark fantasy. But horror, alas, it is not. It shies away from consequences, and this reader found its emotional resonance limited.

This is not to say I'm less than eager to see What Happens Next (which, of course, is the driving question behind much of genre fiction). Fans of intriguing takes on superheroes will find much to savor in this work. Sure, it's not quite up to the aforementioned seminal works by Moore, Miller, &cetera, but the author is still growing. Give him a few more books, and we'll see where he takes us.

Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers
243 pages
Wizards of the Coast Discoveries
Release: April 2008

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