Hex: A Novel of Love Spells

by Darieck Scott

Hex opens in Miami in the near future, where celebrations roil the city after the announcement of Castro's death. Amid the chaos and debauchery, two visiting graduate students, Langston and Azaril, search for a friend who suddenly goes missing — Damian, a charismatic seducer who has drawn the two of them into his orbit in the past. Frustrated in their initial attempts to trace Damian's whereabouts, the two seek help from Langston's aunt, a renowned psychic, whose cryptic warnings and unexpected hunches guide them on a quest that takes them to New Haven and New York City and entangles them in the investigation of Damian's family history — and draws the hostile attention of powerful and apparently supernatural forces.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

375 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2006

Reviews

[Damien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel R. Delaney gave this an excellent review; in many cases I can see why. The writer is extremely intelligent and his prose is often brilliant. And I especially like to read books written in the English language where the white person is NOT the hero or center of attention, where any characters that aren't white are side line characters added for flavor and the sake of liberality. However, much of the scenarios in this over-ambitious novel (at 600+ pages!) reads too much like "Dante's Cove" meets "Noah's Arc" (cheezy occultism-ishyness with rich black men, and GAY drama throughout). The best part is the last 150 pages, so if you have time for a long New Age soap opera, this is for you. If you are hoping for James Baldwin meets Zora Neale Hurston in the 21st Century, this book is bound to disappoint.
So I gave it 3 stars because there were a few chapters that deserved 4- 4.5 stars, and a few that barely deserved 1 and a half. And now I also have Foxy's song "Get Off" stuck in my head!!! (that's a plus)

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will start with the things I did not like about this book. My biggest issue is that the POV isn't always clear which can be confusing. There is a bit at the end in which this is especially true and it makes it hard to follow. Some of the dialogue felt strained but may be simply because I am not use to this author's style of writing. I also felt the ending fizzled a bit. The plot built and built and built and the end just left me feeling like "that's it?"
That being said I very much enjoyed the characters! They were lively, fun, and developed very well. My favorite characters were Quentin and Aunt Regina. I also felt like the overall plot was very fresh, not something I've read before or seen on TV which is always excellent! But my favorite thing about this book was the author's take on magic, who can use or sense magic and what drives it. I especially liked the theory of desire and how that tied in with not only the plot but physics, creation, and the real world. Overall I really enjoyed this book as I said before it was something new and lots of fun to read.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm waffling between 2 and 3 stars on this one; it's probably a 2.5. There were parts of the story and a character I was into, but the writing was really uneven. It took me over 100 pages to get into it, and despite some interesting ideas, it suffered from really trite, fluffy pop-fiction erotica ala those Alyson books with the really bad covers that are called things like, "Hot on His Trail." So, eh. I'm giving it 3 stars instead of two, because politically-oriented queer POC speculative fiction is a good thing. In general. Too bad this wasn't better.

[row row · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written in exactly the style in which I love- flowery, dense, eloquent prose, graceful words and full of fluid metaphors and beautiful sentences. I don’t think it’s like anything I’ve read before in fantasy. The magic is complicated and hard to understand, and the characters are sort of surface level and not very relatable except for a few; the plot is also kind of loose and messy. But with all that, I just love the way it’s written, and even with the magic being as complicated as it is, I did really enjoy the unique system of it. It dragged on at points where I had to push myself to read through it, but there were certain lines in all the dense prose that stuck out to me. Overall, I thought this was sort of an experimental work of art.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like it had a good premise, but the author often got to wrapped up in descriptions that rambled on and on and ultimately didn't truly add to the narrative. And I felt that the ending was... anticlimactic is about as best a word I can find. It did not feel satisfying at all and kind of had me wondering why it was I read through all those descriptive pages. It built and built and then fizzled rather than banged.

Ultimately, it was not what I expected based on the summary when I first got it, and I will not be picking it back up to slog through it again.

[Ben Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really fun book with amazing descriptions. I can imagine someone not being a fan if they are the type that just wants the person to get to the point, but if you are a fan of Steinbeck or Fitzgerald, you love that stuff. I fall squarely into that group and this is a book where every color is given a few lines of such dense description you know exactly what you should see in your mind's eye. So much fun!

[Roclaf Alter -Ego · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just could not get into this book. I thought it was an interesting story but sometimes to me it strove to hard to be seen as a "deep" book.

[Robert Velasco · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, nonsensical, waste a time. Only reason I kept reading it is because I don't like to leave books half-finished.