Book Review: Fablenoir
Review of Fablenoir by Vic Sinclair
I’ll confess upfront: calling this a review feels generous. But that can’t be helped — Fablenoir just isn’t the kind of book I could bring myself to finish. Like many before it, Sinclair’s work attempts to yank those old, dust-covered tales of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm into a harder, meaner world — a place where these childhood figures knock shoulders and swap blows in a shared universe, re-imagined for grown-ups who want grit with their fairy dust.
Sinclair’s aim? Classic noir. The gritty, cigarette-stained shadows of the ‘30s and ‘40s where hard-boiled detectives matched wits with a criminal underworld drenched in vice and venom. In that world, moral lines blur like wet ink, good deeds get a bullet for their trouble, and even the best-intentioned hero — flaws and all — winds up covered in innocent blood. Or at least the blood of those innocent enough to catch his eye.
But here’s the rub: Fablenoir wades so deep into the swamp of noir tropes that, by the fifth chapter, there’s no light left to see by. Everything’s thick with the fog of clichés: substance abuse, double-crosses, half-lit conspiracies, and every sordid misstep you can imagine. The protagonist, Jack, is tracing lines on what’s supposed to be a black-and-white canvas, following dots that spell out “noir thriller,” but lead nowhere. The outline’s there, sure, but the substance? Missing in action.
In the end, Fablenoir didn’t feel like a story that could hold my attention, much less my respect. I dropped it like a spent cigarette in a puddle and let it fade into a damp, indifferent night of its own making.