Our discussion of Snake Agent by Liz Williams

Overall, we really enjoyed this book and some of us are planning to read the other four published books in the series. One person has already read the entire series! We had a great discussion about Snake Agent with some of the highlights below.

Comments/Impressions:

• We didn’t get an elaborate description of the world before the action started. We were told what we needed to know for each scene and were immediately immersed.
• The book had a good twist in the beginning when we find out that Chen is being approached to locate a missing soul or ghost.
• The characters were interesting and the chapters kept getting shorter and shorter which kept it moving along.
• The characters were all so different, each had their own unique characteristics, especially Chen, Zhu, Ma, and the demon hunter No Ro Shi. 
• The mystery was solved halfway through the book and the story really wasn’t about that.
• The book was set in the near future (after 2017) and the technology wasn’t all that different from current day except for the bioweb and the liquid screens.
• Was Hell a jokey Pratchett Hell, or was it supposed to be truly terrible? Hell as bureaucracy.
• Chen’s trip to Hell to find Inari was similar to Orpheus’ journey to the underworld to rescue his wife. Another representation of this was the Night's Bridge scene in Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman that we recently read.
• Inari could have been a stronger character and there was a lack of female characters other than ghosts in brothels, “volunteers” unconsciously powering the bioweb, Chen’s goddess Kuan Yin, and Fan.
• The significance of demons wearing different colors of human skins was not explained and was problematic.
• A three-way marriage between Chen, Zhu and Inari would have been a welcome addition.
• Shout out to the badger/tea kettle.
• The end was a little disappointing – the earth was falling into chaos with no electricity and a plague killing people, but there was no explanation of how the crisis was remedied.
• Balance was important between Heaven and Hell. If the epidemic spread through the human population and killed a lot of people, there wouldn’t be balance. The idea was not to vanquish evil, just to keep a balance.
• Chen kept asking himself why he trusted Zhu. Zhu kept asking why he had a conscious and sometimes seemed to have morals as in, “I caught morals,” which is not a good thing for a demon.
• We thought perhaps it would be revealed that Zhu had some human blood like Inari which enabled her to feel compassion, such as when she pulled the minister out of the pool. Since they both have a little humanity, shouldn’t they be together?
• The people of Hell are disgusted by goodness, like the Addams family!
• We liked the running joke about Zhu being a clotheshorse and his robes always getting ruined.
• Spells were cast by carving the skin of the palm and drawing blood – could this be related to the fact that the author owns a witch supply store?
• We had some questions about Fan – why did she need to hide under the skull in the desert?

Please add any additional thoughts or comments you may have about Snake Agent. We gave this title the codes MYT, CTY, COP, LEL, and NFW with an average rating of 3.9.