The Iron Khan by Liz Williams (a Detective Inspector Chen novel #5). 327 p.The Detective Inspector Chen books have a fabulous near-future setting. Chen is a police officer working in Singapore Three, and he is the police liaison with Hell. Chinese hell, as it turns out--there are many hells. At the beginning of the series he's somewhat shunned by his co-workers and his wife Inari (who's a demon living on Earth) is completely isolated except for her badger companion. By this book, however, Chen is a personal friend of the Emperor of Heaven, who asks him to track down a missing object. Zhu Irzh, Chen's demon partner, gets involved with trying to defeat the Iron Khan of the title. Inari has a Celestial friend over to her houseboat, and an arcane typhoon snatches the boat away from Earth, marooning them in the Sea of Night. Eventually all of the threads come together, of course, but this is not the best book in the series. As another review I read commented, it's easy to keep track of what's happening in any given scene, but overall they don't add up to a clear big picture. I felt that Zhu's involvement with the Iron Khan was particularly plot-coupon-y; he can see the Khan because, well, because the plot needed that to get going.
I really really like this series and found this to be a disappointing addition to it. However, I'm grateful that I got to see it at all, as author/publisher conflict meant it almost didn't get published. I see that another volume in the series is supposed to come out, so I hope that'll be up to the previous books' standards.
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