The Midnight Mayor, by Kate Griffin

The Midnight Mayor

Kate Griffin continues her highly original Matthew Swift series with The Midnight Mayor. It begins some time after the events of the first book, in which Swift is resurrected and seeks revenge on his murderer. Swift is in trouble again in this book when he is nearly killed by a terrifying pack of specters. Even though the book is over 500 pages long (paperback version), it only covers a few frightening days in Swift’s life as he tries to unravel a curse that might destroy the city of London.

Swift, in both his lives, is a sorcerer and attracts more than the usual amount of trouble for his kind. But there’s an innate goodness in him that leads him to right wrongs, correct injustices, and generally protect those who can’t protect themselves. He might sound like nothing more than a do-gooder, but he’s got a wonderfully sarcastic way of thinking about things and he’s not afraid of shooting his mouth off. Even in the plots of these books weren’t so good, I would recommend the books just because of Swift.

After Swift is attacked (again), it becomes clear that something is trying to destroy London. The ravens in the Tower of London are killed and the Stone of London is broken. In our world, these are bad enough. The myths say that if either of these events happen, London will fall. In Swift’s world, they mean that it’s up to the last protection London has: the Midnight Mayor. Except that the previous one was murdered and Swift has just been elected to the position. Swift spends the rest of the book puzzling out what happened, working out how to fix it, and trying not to die. The 500+ pages really fly by.

Apart from the highly original narrator, what really sets this book is Griffin’s style. She has an unusually baroque way of written. The metaphors are intricate, funny, and profound. The descriptions are equally elaborate. Griffin creates a gritty, magical, dangerous London that still manages to stay true to the real one. I will admit sometimes it seems like she lingers a little too long and that the characters speak in speeches every now and then. But this didn’t really detract from the book for me, and it didn’t bog down the pace at all.

The third book of the series is out, so there’s another one for my book store list.

Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman

Anno Dracula

When you hear about a book with the premise that Count Dracula marries Queen Victoria, you just have to read it. And when you find out that the sequel features a vampire Red Baron, that’s just further inducement. So that’s how I came to read Kim Newman’s newly republished Anno Dracula.

The premise alone was sufficient enticement, but as I started reading, I started to notice a whole host of literary cameos. I spotted Dr. Jekyll, Daniel Dravot, Mina Harker and Jack Seward, Fu Manchu, Hawley Griffen (not actually invisible here), and a bunch of others. There are historical cameos, too. Since the plot involves the Ripper murders, the book features almost every key member of the London police.

To return to the plot for a moment: this book begins in late August of 1888 with Seward committing what, in our history, are the Jack the Ripper murders. This isn’t a spoiler, by the way. The killer is revealed near the beginning of the book. The tension comes from whether or not he’s going to be caught. Meanwhile, London and England are adjusting to being ruled by Count Dracula. The city is swamped with vampires, creating all kinds of interesting sociological and criminal problems.

This is not a deep book. It’s purely entertainment. And, since I’m going to try and read Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Hardy in the near future, I need a little pure entertainment.

…but before I dive into the heavy stuff, I need to go to the book story and get the next book in this series.

The Radleys, by Matt Haig

The Radleys

Matt Haig’s The Radleys answers the probably never asked question of: what do you do when you’re a vampire, but your parents have been hiding the truth from you? Even thought the prose was thin, I rather enjoyed reading this novel of an alternate England where vampires exist and the police have an Unnamed Predator Unit that tracks down the worst offenders. The Radleys are abstainers. To be more accurate, Helen Radley is an abstainer who has her husband towing the line. And the children don’t know what they are. They just think they’re weird kids who are always sick with something.

The opening of the novel introduces this family who are desperately trying to seem normal. It would be really easy to read this novel as a metaphor for how we all tamp down on our eccentricities so that we can fit in. Hell, that may have been the author’s intention for all I know. But I didn’t want to read it that way, primarily because it’s just too easy and I hate it when novels wear their morals on their sleeves.

The Radleys’ normalcy disappears over one action packed weekend when Clara’s true nature comes out when a boy tries to assault her. Her parents go into cover up mode and she and her brother have to come to terms with their monster status. All the family secrets come out into the open. Within a few chapters, we have quite the family drama going on only with, you know, bloodsucking and murder. I had a lot of fun this afternoon when I read it.

The only problem I have with the book I alluded to above. The writing is thin. The short chapters and punchy sentences are clearly part of the author’s style. But I found that the prose didn’t have a lot of depth to it. It was hard to sink into this world, though Haig does a great job of dropping hints about vampires in music and literature. Without real depth, though, it’s hard to really believe in this world. There just wasn’t enough detail.

The Road to Bedlam, by Mike Shevdon

The Road to Bedlam

Mike Shevdon’s The Road to Bedlam picks up some nine months after the first book. Niall is learning to be a warder while his girlfriend gestates their first child. This sequel is just as interesting and enjoyable to read as the first book in the series. It builds on what the first book started, giving more details into an alternate past where the British government made a pact with their more outre inhabitants.

Shortly after the introduction catches us up on Niall’s life to date, it divides into a couple of different plots. First, Niall’s daughter by his first wife is involved in an accident at school that later–apparently–takes her life. But Niall soon learns that she has been abducted by people who know how to block his magic. Second, enemy Feyre arrive for “peace talks” and proceed to chase Niall’s girlfriend, Blackbird, across London and Shropshire. Third, Niall is sent to investigate weird happenings in small fishing town. It’s all rather a lot to keep track of, but it makes for a thrilling read.

After Blackbird is saved from her pursuer and the mystery in the fishing town are wrapped up, there is a fantastic climax at Porton Down. Even if the rest of the book weren’t that great, this ending would more than make up for it. Not only are the fight scenes gripping to read through, but Shevdon also reveals more of his secret history. As in the last book, there are references to an eight hundred year old agreement between the British government and the Feyre. In this book, we learn that maybe, just maybe, that agreement is starting to crack. The humans might be looking for a way out of their deal. If nothing else, this revelation will bring me back for the next book.

Sixty-One Nails, by Mike Shevdon

Sixty-One Nails

Mike Shevdon’s Sixty-One Nails is billed as a Neverwhere for this generation. While I can’t entirely agree with that reviewer’s statement (we are talking about Neil Gaiman and who can match him?), I have to say that this is a very engrossing read. I need to go back to the library and get the next book in the series.

Niall Petersen works in the City of London. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in his life; he’s very unremarkable–just another divorce with ex-wife issues. One morning on the way to work, he suffers a heart attack and dies on the Underground. He is revived by a woman who insists that he’s a doctor and that he doesn’t need an ambulance. This is just the first bit of weirdness in a long series of weird events in Niall’s life. In fact, the heart attack is the last normal thing that happens to him.

After dying, Niall finds out that he’s the latest entrant into a long-standing shadow war between feyre courts. It takes him a long time to be convinced of this, but when something inhuman tries to kill him again that very night, Niall starts to believe. The woman who revived him is his reluctant guide in this new world. Like Neverwhere, Sixty-One Nails is set mostly in the parts of London that most people don’t pay attention to. It also incorporates odd bits of English history (like quit rents) and builds them into the plot. I love books that teach me trivia.

We get to explore this new world and its complicated rules and magic along with Niall. We end up racing all over London and Shropshire as Niall (now called Rabbit) and his mentor Blackbird try to save humanity from very horrible deaths. Even though there is some fairly incredible acts of magic in this book, Shevdon has done a remarkable job of making it all believable and tense. There are a couple of scenes towards the end where you really believe that Niall and Blackbird could lose to the  feyre nightmares.

I really started to enjoy this book after I stopped comparing it to Neverwhere. As I said, how can anyone else live up to that level of imagination? If you do pick up this book, ignore the blurbs on the back.

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere

One of the things I love about Neil Gaiman’s work is that you can read them as modern day fairy tales. They have something of the Grimm brothers about them. Things aren’t quite real, which magic and mysterious creatures. The world of the book is governed by unexplained rules, and the characters are playing for high stakes. And there’s a better than average chance more than one character will die. It continually amazes me how Gaiman can bring elements of folklore and history to play in a modern setting.

In Neverwhere, the protagonists are on a quest to avenge a family and save London Below, the dark flipside of the everyday London. Along the way, they have to fight the Beast of London, face the Black Friar’s ordeals and the earl of Earl’s Court. There are characters like Old Bailey and the marquis de Carabas. I love books where I spend almost as much time on Wikipedia looking things up as I do reading the book.

The book begins with Richard Mayhew, an ordinary bloke with a fiancee who is trying to mold him into a titan of industry. Richard just muddles along with his life until a bleeding girl drops into his path one day. Since he possesses some hidden heroic qualities, Richard takes her home and patches her up. His assistance, however, causes him to drop out of his ordinary life and become a part of London Below. Made up of forgotten things and people and old time, London Below is much more interesting than its counterpart and a lot more dangerous. The girl he helped, Door, turns out to be the center of a big conspiracy. Her family has been killed and the assassins are after her now. The only people she can trust are Richard (who is clueless about London Below) and the so-called marquis de Carabas (who seems even more dodgy than the rest of the underside’s denizens).

What really makes this book for me, other than the bits of folklore and history, are the villains: Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. They’re both terrifyingly violent and they seem to be around every corner. Mr. Croup is the voice of the pair, and his archaic and erudite way of speaking make him even more frightening. Mr. Vandemar, the muscle, is a barely controlled psychopath who hurts anything that he can in the most painful way possible. Even though they’re a pretty fantastical pair, they make the danger Richard and Door and their group face seem more real.

I can’t say much more about this book without giving away the conspiracy. Like The Night Circus (by Erin Morgenstern), the setting really makes this book. But unlike that book, the characters stand up to the setting. They grow and change and we really get to learn who these characters are. The transformation in Richard is particularly spectacular. He grows from a regular Joe into a fully fledged hero.

Neverwhere is one of the reasons I wish Gaiman publishes more novels. I love this book and American Gods and Good Omens and the rest. He’s truly original.

The Magician King, by Lev Grossman

The Magician King

It’s rare that a sequel is better than the first book in the series, but I have to say that Lev Grossman’s The Magician King is better than The Magicians. The story seems to have settled into its setting. We know who the characters are, so we don’t have to waste time going over the same ground. Instead, the plot marches solidly on towards an unpredictable but fantastic conclusion. If this book means that Grossman is just going to get better and better with these books, I don’t know if I can handle another book without completely geeking out and forcing my friends and family to read them all.

We meet our heroes and heroines–the kings and queens of Fillory and former students of Brakebills in New York–killing time. Their kingdom pretty much runs itself, and the lack of anything worthwhile is starting to wear on Quentin in particular. He decides to get away from the capitol on an errand, volunteering one of his co-rulers to go with. That errand, a trip to an outlying part of the kingdom, turns out to be the start of a quest–though Quentin doesn’t realize it. Grossman puts a lot of things into motion in this book. I didn’t even realize that some of the unresolved questions from the first book–such as where one of the characters learned her magic, what the Neitherlands really are, etc.–come back to play unexpectedly. When you’ve read as much as I have, you learn to love books that can surprise you.

The quest takes Queutin beyond the borders of his kingdom and back to Earth. After his desperate attempts to return to Fillory finally succeed, we all find ourselves in the end stages of the quest. The pace changes from leisurely to so tense that I ended up reading late into the night to finish it off and see how it all turned out. I hesitate to say anymore, because everything ends up so neatly and beautifully. But I will say that it ends with a segue into a possible new chapter for the series. Grossman opened a new door there, literally, that I really want to go through.

By the end, I realized that this book was about three different things. First, it is a quest. Quentin and his companions have to save their adopted nation and magic. More importantly, this book is about what it really means to be a hero, to make sacrifices. Quentin sacrifices more than he thought he was capable–more than I thought he was capable of, considering what a whiner he’s been in the past. But above all, I think this book is about taking responsibility and paying the price for your mistakes. It’s almost like there’s a karmic balance to be met. Instead of characters being able to carry on trying to redeem themselves, they have to make sacrifices to make up for them. It’s an interesting point to ponder. The sacrifices these characters make are far from easy ones. Crowns are lost. Doors are permanently barred. But once they’ve paid their karmic price, it’s like the slate is wiped clean. On top of being a wonderfully imaginative fantasy and being terrifically written, it’s also a great philosophical read.

Fated, by S.G. Browne

Fated

S.G. Browne’s Fated is a fun read, especially if you have a warped sense of humor. Like I do. Fated is a demented book, but I mean that in a good way. Everything is fair game in this book, even god. (Perhaps especially god, who is known as Jerry in this book.) I had a very good time reading this book. I’d recommend it to all my friends with warped senses of humor.

Our narrator is Fate, who is in a bit of a rut after more than 250,000 years of assigning life paths to billions of humans. He’s forbidden to interfere and with the rise of consumerism and the other attendant evils of modern life, his humans are consistently screwing up their lives. Everyone’s miserable and it’s making Fate depressed. The only bright spot on the horizon is a very special, funny, and lovely woman who Fate keeps bumping into. But Sara is on the path of Destiny (who is a bit of a bitch, actually) and Fate supposed to stay away from her. But you just can’t help who you fall in love with.

As Fate falls more deeply in love with Sara, he starts to cheer up. He also starts to bend the rules about interfering, nudging his humans towards better lives. As I read, I thought this would be a fairly run of the mill funny book. But then the plot starts to twist and the book just gets better. I loved how this book twisted and turned its way to a wonderfully bittersweet ending. I won’t ruin it for anyone else, in spite of what the scientists say.

But what I loved about this book was its cast of intangibles and emotions and deadly sins and virtues. Karma is an absolute hoot; he stole every scene he was in.

I’ve seen this reaction before, back during the Classical Age, after the exodus and before the birth of the Roman Empore, when the vast majority of humans were hungry for messiahs and spiritual leaders. Karma would sit down on a hill or under a tree and just start taking and the people would flock to him, asking him to lean them out of whatever persecution or injustice they suffered. When he got them all good and worked up, right where he wanted them, he’d spontaneously combust and they’d run away screaming.

Afterward, we’d have a good laugh about it over some wine and unleavened bread. (188)*

And how can you not love a book where Death is better known as Dennis (and rigor mortis creeps him out) and god is Jerry? There are heaps on historical jokes. Fate had one night stands with Helen of Troy and Cleopatra. And:

Faith has been replaced more than once over the millennia, Fidelity was transferred to a desk job in the wake of the free-love debacle, Reason got canned after the Salem Witch Trials, and Ego lost his job after the Beatles broke up. (20)

You’d think a book about fate would be terribly depressing, but this book was an absolute joy to read. I actually wish it was a little longer so that I could hang out with the cast a little bit longer. And then there’s the style. This book is concise and punchy, never wearing out jokes and scenes by making them drag on too long. Fate is a delightfully irreverent narrator:

The thing about Truth is that he’s a kleptomanic…The thing about Wisdom is that he has an inferiority complex. (206)

I hope Browne has more books like this one inside. I’m very much looking forward to whatever he comes up with next.

* All quotes from the 2010 trade paperback edition.

Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes

Zoo City

Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City is a delightful blend of noir and contemporary fantasy, set in exotic Johannesburg, South Africa. As soon as I read the first chapter, I was hooked. It was so good I read it in less than a day. There’s a lot going on in this story. There’s a killer mystery and an interesting premise (that I’ll get to in a second). But what makes this book is its atmosphere. Without beating the reader over the head with details, you get a sense of the ricketty, crime ridden tenements where the main character spends most of her time so so strong that you can almost smell the stink of it. The dialogue is peppered with Afrikaans and several African languages and the cast is wildly diverse. I tip my metaphorical hat to Beukes’s skill as a writer.

Zinzi December is a part-time lost object retriever and part-time 419 scammer until she gets caught up in a mystery that’s a lot bigger than anyone (even the reader) suspects. What complicates matters is that she carries the weight of her brother’s murder on her back in the quite literal form of a sloth. Because if the sloth, she can’t move on with her life. She was once a drug addicted journalist, living the high life. By the time we meet her, she’s off the drugs and in a stable relationship with a man who is reminded of his crimes as a child soldier by a mongoose that lives with him.

The action really gets rolling when, in order to pay off some old debts, Zinzi takes a job tracking down a missing pop star. All of her leads dead end, though she risks her life to try and find out where the girl went. As we read and as Zinzi investigates, there are small hints that something is off. Although neither Zinzi nor I put them together until the utterly thrilling Part II. Until Part II, I was content with the book. It was every interesting, but not spectacular. Part II is bloody spectacular. I hate to give away details in a mystery, but I will say that the missing pop start is just a small part of the bigger crime. It’s interesting that Beukes lets you think it’s all over at the end of Part I.

So, the premise. This isn’t explicitly talked about much in the novel, so you have to pick it up from context. In Zinzi’s world, people’s crimes are readily apparent by the animal that appears shortly after their crimes–even if the death of the other person was unintentional. Throughout the novel, you get news stories and other hints of what’s going on in the rest of the world. If the animal dies, the Undertow–a mysterious and terrifying force–apparently kills the person. It’s never explained where these animals and the Undertow come from, or even that they represent. Are they guilt? Are they punishment? I really hope there’s a sequel to this book, if only to get more clues.

Zoo City was a very enjoyable read, with many things to recommend it. And I’m not the only one doing the recommending. Zoo City won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke award. I very much look forward to her next work.

A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches

The further I got into Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches, the more I thought, “This is what Twilight could have been with a better heroine.” If I’m really being honest, I’ll add, “And if it had a better writer.” A Discovery of Witches is a meandering contemporary fantasy that achieves the amazing goal of being original in a very crowded genre. It’s a highly entertaining read, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Harkness comes up with in the future.

Instead of a gritty urban setting, A Discovery of Witches opens in Duke Humphrey’s library at Oxford University. Diana Bishop is a scholar of the history of science, particularly alchemy. Working in academic myself, I felt right at home among the stacks in this fictional Oxford. A bewitched document touches off the action and almost before you can get your feet and figure out what’s going on, Diana is being chased all over Oxford, the French countryside, and upstate New York. Matthew Clairmont, a vampire, adds more than a dash of dark mystery to liven things up. Diana and Matthew are a great pair. Matthew is protective and intelligent. Diana is stubborn and independent. In spite of their obvious attraction to each other, each refuses to be trampled over by the other.

Diana and Matthew’s relationship alone could have fueled a novel. But on top of this, Diana finds herself an unwitting guardian to the document she discovered. Other members of the supernatural community are willing to kill and torture to get their hands on it. While the novel wanders from setting to setting and mini-drama to mini-drama, this chase adds tension to the whole–excuse me but I have to say it–witch’s brew. I have to admire Harkness for keeping that many balls up in the air while still writing a coherent, balanced narrative.

The mysterious document that triggers the action, at times, seems like a MacGuffin. There’s a lot of speculation about what’s in it. After a few chapters, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that Matthew and Diana’s relationship challenges the status quo in the supernatural community. It threatens the secret the supernaturals have been keeping for centuries. In Oxford, various representatives of tradition start to warn Diana away from the document and Matthew. People break into her apartment, follow her, launch little attacks to scare her away. Slowly, Harkness turns up the heat on her heroine. When Oxford becomes too dangerous, Matthew takes her to his ancestral home in France. Then things get really ugly when Diana is kidnapped and tortured.

Near the end of the book, Diana and Matthew flee to Diana’s aunts’ home in New York to regroup. In the last quarter of the book, I got the clear sense that Harkness was building up to a second book in the series. But she gives A Discovery of Witches a satisfying ending that makes up for all of this.

This book is so skillfully done, I’m surprised that it’s the author’s first published work. She’s subtle and the prose is wonderfully detailed without being stodgy or getting bogged down. There’s enough action to satisfy any reader, and more than enough emotional depth to elevate this book from the rest of the crowd. I’m really, really looking forward to the sequel to this compulsively readable book.