Jerry has a new war-song! (And… a note about his abilities.)

As many of you already know, the more powerful characters in the Angel Brings Fire novel series, have a “war-song” — a mysterious type of half-psychic, half-real “music” that sometimes plays when these characters energize or use the alien-powers that they have inherited from the Storied Watcher.

In previous editions of the blog I have added posts that try to describe (in a very general way) what these “war-songs” sound like. The information provided earlier on is still valid, but as time goes by and as I encounter more popular music, I reserve the right to amend the allocations of “whose war-songs sound like what ‘real’ song”.

Today’s one such day… in the last “war-songs” posting I had the following remark about Jerry Kaysten, the former Chief of Staff to the (original) President of the United States :

Jerry Kaysten : Calgary by Bon Iver, but only the short part beginning at the song’s 1:50 mark; this melody predominates when Jerry uses his “killer joke” ability. When running at high speed, his war-song sounds more like Time Turns Around by the Spoons.”

This is still accurate but there is a different piece of music that much better replicates what the quick-footed Mr. Kaysten’s personal war-song actually sounds like : the fantastic “My Decision” number by the Netherlands pop-rock group, Moss. (Not to be confused with the U.K. heavy-metal band of the same name.)

Make sure you check this one out on YouTube… it’s not only what Jerry sounds like when he gets going, but it’s a crazy good song anyway! (And it’s available for sale on iTunes, so do the right thing and pay these innovative musicians for the use of their creative works… I did.)

As an aside… it may at first seem that Jerry Kaysten’s alien-powers are relatively mundane compared to those of some of the other “post-humans” (particularly ones like Cherie Tanaka and Wolf).

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Jerry’s hyper-speed abilities, although they can only be used for a relatively short amount of time between resting-periods, can render most opponents — either “more-than-human” or just plain old Homo Sapiens — next to defenseless.

Only a very few other characters, for example Misha or Minnie Chu (and of course the Storied Watcher herself), have the reflexes and quick reaction time to adequately defend themselves against Jerry’s rapid-fire attacks. Others, such as Bob Billings, have abilities that somewhat erode Kaysten’s advantages but are still not a complete defense against him.

So give our friend Mr. Kaysten some respect… he may look like an “also-ran”… but he’s anything but! 😉

Marcus Shields