Devil's Midnight
by Yuri Kapralov
Akashic
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While Nata sleeps with pretty much anything that moves, she does have one or two true loves, like Alex Lebedev. He not really that idealistic, but he does fight when he could run, and his sister Lucy has volunteered as a nurse on the armored train "Our Homeland." Perhaps you've heard of the armored trains that played a big part of the battles of the revolution. Essentially, a train was covered with steel plate and machine guns, several large naval guns were mounted on cars, and these things ran around shooting at each other during battle. While impressive, they suffered a few technical limitations, like having to stay on the railroad tracks and not be blasted by the other trains. While they were often decisive in battle, assignment to one of these metal snakes was largely a death sentence -- by the time our story opens, Our Homeland is on its fifth commander, the others having been killed in action.
Russian novels, especially those about wartime, tend to be as large as the territory they need to cover. At just under 300 pages, Kapralov's works seems incommensurate with the long list of locations and battles on the flyleaf. Yet, by focusing on just a few people who survive (and most of the people in this novel are lucky to last two pages) the breadth of misery the revolution caused comes though clearly. Against the backdrop of pain we see the remnants of the privileged classes still taking their pleasure, as Nata orders wine and cocaine and lovers to specification in a fine restaurant. She has a few kinks, which are pretty clearly explained, adding a prurient pleasantness to the story. What is not clarified is just what role all these Satanists play in driving the revolution forward, although the implication is they make the Bolsheviks successful. More to the point, as we end the story, this missing meteorite reappears, and it does have a strange power -- Nata forgives her arch rival just as she is about to torture and kill her. How -- why -- what all remain open questions, and the book just peters out with a vague "happily ever after" ending.
Despite this abrupt ending, Devil's Midnight is immediately engaging, thoroughly enjoyable, and written in the best tradition of Russian authors struggling to explain their land and it's people and how miserably screwed up things can get despite everyone's best efforts to do the right thing for the right reason. In addition, somewhere, who knows where, is a vast spring of raw alcohol that pours forth from the earth to salve the pain of the Russian soul. How else could 15 million people stay continually drunk thought a revolution? It must be the will of God.
Akashic Books: http://www.akashicbooks.com/
Carl F Gauze
