This is another favorite from one of my go-to authors—I’ve read all of his previous books, with Rivers being my all-time favorite (though it’s undeniably bleak). Like Rivers, this novel leans into the darker side of storytelling.

The book opens with two men sitting around a campfire deep in the woods when an elderly woman with dementia stumbles upon them. She has no idea who she is or how she got there. The men, focused on their mysterious job—searching for something they’ll “know when they see it”—leave her behind and continue on their journey.

Their search leads them to an old church, where they finally uncover the object they’ve been sent to find. Meanwhile, a concerned neighbor, unable to reach the elderly woman, arrives at her home. She finds the woman disoriented, covered in dirt and leaves, and her house in complete disarray. Help is called, and the woman is taken to an assisted living facility.

Eventually, the two men, the neighbor, and the object they discovered become intertwined in unexpected ways. They’re not the only ones after this mysterious item, and as the different groups converge, the tension builds. To say more would give too much away, but trust me—this one is well worth the read.

Once again, Michael Farris Smith has written a very dark book about conflicted people doing dodgy things. The writing is moderately pretty, but fail to pack any real emotion or bring any feeling out of a reader. Fans of his work will like this one just fine, but will likely not be wowed.

This is another of my favorite authors, I have read all of his previous books, Rivers being by all time fav (though it's quite bleak). This book is similar in that it's also on the dark side. Two men are around a campfire in the middle of some woods when an old lady wanders up to them, she has dementia and has no clue who she is or where she is. The two men are on a job looking for something they were told they would know what it is when they see it. The two men leave the woman and continue on their journey arriving at an old church, which eventually leads them to the item they are searching for. A neighbor of the old woman had been trying to get ahold of her, and eventually shows up at her door, she finds her at home though she's covered in dirt/leaves and appears to have been wandering in the woods. Her house is also very messy. The woman calls for help and the old lady is taken away to an assisted living home. The two men and this woman eventually connect along with the item the two men had found, it also turns out there are others also looking for this item, all of these groups end up connecting. To say more would be a spoiler, I really suggest reading this is very good. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Little Brown & Co for the ARC.

Does redemption for the broken exist?

When two men take a shady job to retrieve something important with the description, you'll know it when you see it, they have no idea that they are about to embark on an epic with steep consequences. They find a child in a church cellar who won't speak. It becomes apparent this child believed to possess paranormal abilities is being hunted.

Who or what is pulling the strings: religious zealots, the superstitious, pursuers of idolatry, or something more?
Does it matter?

The Mississippi backwoods in their strange beauty are an ideal place to kick off this journey. I spent a lot of time there camping, swimming, and wandering around as a kid and I can attest that Smith breathed life into those areas with his sparse prose.

He doesn't spoon feed readers every single detail. I enjoy writers who expect readers to keep up and think for themselves along the way. The small cast of characters makes their mark. We get crumbs of backstory here and there, but their current decisions are the focus and never wavers. The frenetic action sequences have the grit and grime of reality.

The pages flew by in this chase of wild intensity and thought-provoking turmoil.

4.5 ⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the Advanced Readers Copy for review. These are my unbiased opinions.

Loved it!
Micheal Farris Smith is a master at grit-lit!
Two men.. one young one old, are doing a job for some dangerous men.. to hunt down something precious but they have no idea what it is.. they are told they “will know it when you see it”
it is a “someone’ that they come across… a child in the cellar of an old abandoned church they’ve been led to who doesn’t speak..
This child is to be brought in.. she’s being hunted down for her supposed special powers.
Will they give her up to them… ?
There are only a handful of full of characters here and trouble around every corner they go to.
It’s a fast, action packed story.
I have read all of this author’s works.. except NICK.
He is a superb writer!

Thank you to Netgalley and Little Brown for the ARC!

A lone, addled woman wanders from her decrepit home in the woods to a campfire with two men around it; two men who happen to be searching for the same thing the old woman is, when a spindle of cash rolls out of her bag at their feet. Not one to waste an opportunity, Burdean prepares to kill the woman over the money, as he has nothing left of a conscience. He and his reluctant partner, Keal, are searching for magic at a time when it is hard to be found and very costly. Keal stops Burdean from committing the murder, knowing she doesn’t have the presence of mind to identify anyone. The woman later finds, in a burnt-out church cellar surrounded by bodies, a young girl, who is rumored to have great powers, which other, wealthy men will pay to obtain. Lay Your Armor Down is an interesting title, because the mystery and tension in the book call for more of a call to arms than surrender, and the no one does atmosphere better than Michael Farris Smith.The book has such a noir feel to it that it’s very hard to put down once you start it, and this novel does not disappoint. Well done, Mr. Smith.

When I saw that there was a new MFS novel coming out I jumped at the opportunity to read it early. Thank you to Netgalley for the copy...

Color me impressed. From the first line and the atmospheric way that MFS wrote the scenes, described the characters, and laid out the story, I was floored with a feeling of wanting to be a bird in the sky or a fly on the wall in this universe. To me, MFS's books always skirt along the magic realism world, but it's a dangerous and somewhat unbelievable setting, I'm guessing on purpose. This is brilliant for a story that takes place in the South and falls under the grit-lit, Southern Noir sub-genre. The South is not a place I understand at all, so for me to travel along with the characters in any of MFS's novels I consider it a dangerous, yet welcome adventure. Lay Your Armor Down is no different, and maybe was a bit more welcoming than some others.

The line between what is real and what is magic is very thin in this novel. I loved it. The prose was incredible, mixing Kerouac's stream of consciousness and MFS's solid descriptive, figurative gorgeousness. The characters were few, but mighty, and I felt that each one developed in their own way from the flashbacks to the current time period and it was genius. I loved the feel of this book. I wanted to keep reading it and probably will go back to it in short order. I'm a super fan of this book and can't recommend it enough. If you are an MFS fan, you will want to read this. If you've never read of his books, this is a good starting point (I'd probably start with The Fighter, but if not, go here). This was a 100% win for MFS and this book will stay with you after you finish. Metaphors, reality, and wonderment await... you'll love it.

Netgalley AR edition review: It's always a pleasure to read a new Michael Farris Smith novel. He has a gift for writing extended narrative prose that is abstract and deceptive, giving the reader enough information and emotion, but not spoon-feeding the plot to the reader. Lay Your Armor Down was no different. There aren't many characters, some are presented with minimal detail, and the setting doesn't change much. No matter. MFS's description and skill at characterization gives the reader room to ask questions and do the mental work to define the plot for themselves. Lay Your Armor Down is loosely centered around a 9-year old girl who is sought after by many people for clearly nefarious reasons, two friends/colleagues that are bound by their willingness to do jobs beyond the reach of the law, and a woman who has experienced trauma and looks after her neighbor suffering from dementia. The plot that unfolds leaves many questions unanswered and, again, requires the reader to come to their own conclusions and to fill in the blanks regarding meaning, symbolism, and motive, particularly with behind the scenes activity surrounding the main characters. To this reader, Smith shows the reader the ultimate respect and, truthfully, it's a gift to be allowed to interpret important details in a novel with no limitations - almost a poetic license. This might be Lay Your Armor Down's greatest attribute; Smith takes the risk of placing a lot of the undefined details of the novel in the reader's hands and, in this case, I believe this risk paid off. Masterful.

I'm surprised to be the first to rate and review this book. I thought Smith was a bigger name than that by now. He's put out a bunch of books, and I've read most of them. Some were four stars, a few were three stars. This is the first two-star, disappointingly enough.
Why the low rating? Well, the book just didn't work for me. It has a lot of the familiar elements: Smith's inimitable style, economy of language, and the Southern Noir vibes which usually just means a lot of poverty, trailers, and "ain't" s. But ... nothing about it really worked for me.
I've tried to nail down precisely why, and here's what I've come up with:
1. It has the wrong density - the prose looped and looped on itself in repetitions, overlong barely punctuated sentences rolling into overlong ooverstylized paragraphs. Smith is an author who can do wonderful things with words, but here he seems to have focused on that over other things, like plot.
2, I didn't really care about any of the characters. Maybe I've had enough Southern Nir. Maybe Smith spends too long playing around with prose instead of developing them. They always feel miles away, buried under narrative stylings.
3. Wasn't much of a plot, really. And it's difficult to gauge what the novel was trying to say.
There's one chapter in the novel, chapter 16, that's clear and clean and as good as anything the author has ever written. The rest is oh so muddled.
The good thing is that the novel's relatively short. But frustratingly, it wasn't worth the time. I'm sure it'll work differently for different readers, as these things always do. Thanks Netgalley.