The Crow: Temple of Night

Crow Rating: 4 Crows

Author: S.P. Somtow

Published: Nov 1999 (224 pages)

Book Overview
This novel takes a close and graphic look at the dark underworld of Bangkok's market of flesh for money. The story follows an affluent woman, Linda Dusit, and her grandson, Stephen Lelliott. Stephen, half Thai and American, has returned to Thailand to bring back the ultimate human survival story for his film company. What he did not count on was falling in love with his subject and being caught in the cover-up of her murder. The cover-up involves many high ranking officials in Bangkok as well as some Americans. Linda Dusit is a woman of high prestige. She is also knowledgeable and experienced in the "other world" and proves to be an important ally for Stephen. The lines that separate the affluent and the downtrodden are blurred as Stephen dares to open himself up to a woman whose sole purpose in life has been to fetch the highest price possible for her virginity. The events leading to the murder and the cover-up culminate on April 13th, the beginning of Songkwan, the festival of renewal and cleansing. What a perfect time for the realm of The Crow to intercede and help bring two lovers together again while seeking to satisfy the thirst for revenge.

Personal Thoughts
Temple of Night takes the reader on a magical journey into the underworld of Thailand's prostitution ring and into the realm of the dead. S.P. Somtow weaves a very detailed story of Thai life. His writing exhibits his extensive knowledge of Thai customs, and language. He uses a lot of the terminology and identifiers specific to the language. So as not to loose the reader, Somtow offers explanations of the terminology along the way. The words are in Italics, to help with identification. Somtow brings back the image of an Irony masked avatar and puts a new spin on how the avatar goes about his carnage. Although the appearance of the avatar is reserved until the latter part of the novel, it is well worth the wait due to the excellent ability of Somtow to pull the reader into a world that is not all that far from reality. This is not a "smash em up" Crow story. Given depth of story and character, Temple of Night carries The Crow from its simplistic storyboard roots to an ever-expanding universe of complex characters and stories. By far, the best Crow novel, in my opinion, to date. A word of note. The latter parts of the novel, especially the final conflict, deal with more of a fantasy element than the previous novels have. It may be a bit over the top for those not accustomed to this style of writing.

Where to find this book
This novel is out of print. You can, however, find it though retailers who have access to warehouses that may contain out of print items (Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Walden's, Hastings). You can also try Amazon.Com. They can conduct a search for out of print items. Another online place is eBay online auctions. Just go to www.ebay.com and do a search on "The Crow" from the book section.