Reading roundup (urban fantasy recs) and Snowflake Challenge, days 10-11
This reading roundup is batch #1 from the epic urban fantasy rec party from the December ramble, and I would like to say thank-you to all the people who recommended both of these books to me, which gave me the kick in the butt to finally read them, after meaning to check out the series(eseseses) for quite a while :)
1. Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift #1) -- So. Matthew Swift. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not going to be able to avoid comparing this book (and the sequels, I suspect) to Rivers of London, probably a lot. And I didn't love it as much as I loved RoL, and I will want to dig into the reasons. But for the record? I want all the crossover fic now (more on which below).
I'm not sure how to describe my impressions of the book, but it's something like... OK, say I really like cranberries. But I am not a fan of oat bran; I don't hate it or anything, but I don't consume it for pleasure either. Reading A Madness of Angles was like eating an oat bran muffin with cranberries. It is a really good oat bran muffin, as far as oat bran muffins go! But the part I'm actually enjoying are the cranberries, of which, as you may imagine, there is a lot less than of oat bran. Which is to say, the parts of the book I really enjoyed were buried in the parts I was mostly indifferent towards. It was totally worth it for the cranberries, and I can appreciate the muffin aesthetically, but I would've been happier just eating cranberries straight from the box. (RoL, for the record? is a muffin made entirely out of cranberries, with a few random flakes of oat bran. With my name picked out on top with yet more cranberries. But that is neither here nor there.)
Let us delve into the cranberry/oat bran ratio in detail: spoilers!
The writing was mostly oat bran for me. The writing is quite beautiful in places, and has profound bits that worked for me. I really liked the dialogue for the most part; there are some very distinctive speech patterns I really enjoyed, like Sinclair's and Dr Seah's, and even Matthew came alive for me when he actually spoke. But there is a tendency towards soliloquizing that I get bored of very quickly, a piling of description that feels almost Dickensian and makes me react accordingly -- i.e. once it gets to the point of diminishing returns (which for me happens about 2-4 lines in, on average), my eyes start glazing over and it becomes very hard to combat the desire to just skim -- like during the extended litterbug opening scene, and every magical battle that follows. The sentence fragments and angel interludes just felt pretentious without adding much to my experience, which is totally a matter of taste, I concede, but there you go. But some things worked really, really well, like the creepy simplicity of "Hello, Matthew's fire". ikel89 did point out that the drowning-by-description could make in-universe sense for a sorcerer who is so immersed in the life of the city (and I could see the new-to-life angels similarly taking everything in), but it is such an ineffective style for me personally. I guess the book was like 500 pages, but I thought I would've been just as happy or happier with a text half that length. (In contrast, the cynical, understated narration of RoL works so, SO much better for me on the whole, even though I think I might actually like Griffin's dialogue more. This is obviously a matter of taste, because I've seen multiple readers complain that Peter's narration feels weirdly detached to them, but for me, it works perfectly. And everybody praises Griffin's writing (which is impressive, just... not in a way I like); so, yeah...)
The worldbuilding is probably the toughest thing for me to distill into cranberries or bran, but, really, what it is is oat bran covered in a solid coating of cranberries. It is really neat worldbuilding at the abstract level, the way sorcery works in this universe, and the way it is distinct from magic as practiced by magicians and warlocks (though I'd like to get an external point of view on the comparison, too, since Matthew is not exactly unbiased). I liked the magic of the White Clan, the dreamlike pursuit from graffiti pointer to graffiti pointer, the garishly painted tiger rubbing against Matthew as it comes alive and squelching by on dripping paws. I liked the description of that feeling of being lost in a place you know which is the source of the bikers' magic. That paper-powered liches/golems were really cool, and very, very creepy. The early scene where Matthew thwarts Hunger with his Oystercard was quite simply awesome. Offerings to the Last Train were pretty neat, too. But there are only so many descriptions of pulling power out of wires that are interesting to read, and the tendency towards overdescription sapped the, er, magic from the magic in many, many cases. The very industrial/technology-based feeling of urban sorcery also didn't particularly resonate with me -- it's a neat idea, and quite refreshing to see a very different take on this than the usual "magic fries technology" thing, but aluminium-winged fairies and supernatural creatures who all sound like the screaming of brakes are less intrinsically interesting to me, I guess, than the regular kind.
The anthropomorphic personifications, or whatever the Bag Lady (who feels downright Pratchettian!), the Beggar King, and so on are, were really, really wonderful. The urban dragon, a "beast of forgotten and disobeyed things", is pretty brilliant! The Electric Blue Angels themselves are a very neat idea, too. (This is the one area where this book worked better for me than RoL, whose supernatural entities tend to leave me cold.)
The tone is very bran-y indeed. Which is not a value judgement, really, it's just that the book is a lot darker than I prefer my urban fantasy to be, with very little there to lighten the mood. Maybe it gets a bit lighter in the sequels? Because Matthew starting the book off with all his friends dead except for the two who are probably opposing him was pretty depressing, but the ending managed to be even more depressing, so, like, it would be nice if something good happened every once in a while, in a more cheerful mode than "Oda didn't actually shoot him this time, it was just a joke". And even the urban environment is a lot darker and more grimy than you usually get in urban fantasy, without the stylized slickness of noir. The pigeons everywhere, the litter and decay... It's just depressing (except I like the rats!) And, of course, all the death, dismemberment, and betrayal is kind of a downer, too.
There were some things I liked about Matthew -- the way he keeps pointing out to everyone that he did not kill Khay, that Lee was dead to begin with, so it wasn't really like killing him, and his "it's complicated" explanations and relationship with the angels -- I liked those details. But mostly I find the people Matthew comes across a lot more interesting and likeable than Matthew himself, and wish he'd spend more time interacting with them than inside his own head.
Characters I liked a lot and hope(d) to see more of -- Sinclair, who is super-intriguing in his concerned citizenry (I was so happy he didn't die! I kind of expect him to become my favorite); Dr Seah and her bedside manner; Jean the nurse (does she show up again? I hope she does!). I had also liked Blackjack and was sorry to see he was the traitor. I'd liked Dana Mikeda a lot, too, especially the fact that her reaction to the "yer a wizard, Harry" revelation was first 'how do I make it stop', and that she insisted on boundary conditions and asking questions in the apprentice relationship, but, well, hopefully she'll be back in flashbacks, at least? Oda I'm reserving judgement on; I like her interaction with Matthew, but the whole Order thing rubs me the wrong way a little, hypocritical extermists that they are.
Finally, Bakker! Bakker is a brilliant antagonist, and I thought the combination of ruthless sorcerer in pursuit of immortality who is happy to have people killed or worse for his goal with the kindly father figure was really, really well done, and the whiplash between the two, both as experienced by Matthew and for the reader, was quite palpable. (Poking around Tumblr has brought up the fancast of Ian McKellen for Bakker, and YESPLZ!)
As I said, the writing was a hurdle as often as a feature, but there were quite a few quotes I really liked:
re: line for the London Eye: "there was also a family from, judging by the accent, somewhere in south-east England, whose youngest child was only now discovering her fear of heights."
re: Sinclair: "a belly constrained by a shiny waistcoat like a straining bulkhead, any second about to explode a shrapnel of buttons."
"'Yes,' I said, slumping across the couch with the sudden, absolute certainty that coffee was the thing around which every ambition in my life revolved."
"Merton -- a place that I had always regarded as something of a fiction spread by the enemies of London and was surprised to find so real and large."
"At one moment we were riding a billion dollars through Switzerland, and seeping through the radios of a NASA shuttle about to launch."
"No one had told me that vengeance could be so boring."
Matthew and Vera:
M: "What's a mostly properly elected head?"
V: "It's generally accepted that if there was an election, I'd win. So I figure -- why bother?"
"I saw the bikers slash through the air with their crowbars, and as they did, the gashed air poured out fire from where it was torn."
re: the Downers -- "they felt that the city, the true city of necessary pulsing daily functions, was most alive."
re: paintings of the White Clan: "A pair of cyclists made entirely out of human ears started peddling with their tiny ear-feet."
Matthew sat "beside a large red button with the alluring notice 'THIS BUTTON DOES NOTHING' stuck up next to it, a label that troubled and confused us throughout almost the entire performance. [...] As we walked past the big red button, our hand reached out instinctively and, as fast as only the spark can fly, we pressed it. Nothing happened. My face turned read, and, head bowed, we sidled away, feeling all the more bemused."
re: Bakker in his wheelchair: "he wore it like a model might wear a pair of glasses, as if at any moment he might leap out of it to a cry of 'Why, Mr Bakker, you're beautiful!', and amaze the audience with his agility and strength. It didn't look like a tool for dealing with his paralysis, nor the thing in which he would almost certainly die, but just a piece of metal clothing, or some family-inherited piece of furniture that he'd sat in as a lively child."
Bakker, to the angels: "You... things of little surplus electricity, you odd remnants of feeling, confused signals, what's your anger about? You've been given a gift beyond the wildest comprehension -- you are alive!"
"and for a moment, in that place, I could feel every pigeon like they were hairs on my head, blowing in the wind, and taste every rat like their claws were the serrated edges of my own teeth."
Jean: "Men in bandages feel so righteous it's almost unbearable."
Dana, to Matthew: "You know, for a man possessed -- sorry -- in a complicated relationship with mystical entities of bloody magic and forgotten life -- you're pretty useless when it comes to a tight situation, aren't you?"
"a man who looks at everything and sees a tool to be used, a force to be manipulated, rather than just good, old-fashioned stuff doing its thing, should not be free of the restraints of humanity."
So, that's kind of the worked/didn't work breakdown for me. And/but I find that, now that I'm no longer reading the book, I have more positive feelings about it, retroactively, because the things staying with me are the things that I liked, of which there were plenty, and not my frustration with having to fight my way through the overdescriptive and odd prose. I absolutely intend to continue with the series (I have The Midnight Mayor in my backpack right now, in fact).
And now, I would like to see a crossover where Matthew's London and Peter Grant's London end up spilling into each other across a thin spot in the veil between universes, because there are a number of interactions I would find most interesting! spoilers for both canons!
- Peter would be delighted to discover a world where magic and technology are so compatible (and in fact would probably make a better sorcerer than Newtonian wizard, given his space cadet tendencies and affinity for random bits of architecture)
- Bakker would be very, very interested in Nightingale, just in case his aging backwards thing is something that could be induced in him, too
- Nightingale and Sinclair discussing the nature of arrangements and how they relate to keeping the peace would be most interesting as well
- Dr Seah and Dr Walid swapping patient stories might be interesting (possibly Jean the nurse, too)
- Vera and Zach would make kind of a cute couple I feel.
2. Patricia Briggs, Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1) -- I've been seeing these books around for a while, and on the one hand wanting to read them because I'd read something else by Briggs and liked her writing, and I kept hearing good things about them, but on the other hand, werewolves just aren't really my thing -- I've found weres to be the least interesting of supernatural types for me in thos urban fantasy books that have everybody in them, the Dresden Files and the Hollows and the Sookie Stackhouse books, so it didn't seem wise to embark on a series that focused on them. Also, the covers are awful. But last time we were having brunch and talking urban fantasy, lodessa said this was one werewolf series that was very aware of the messed up dynamics that werewolf books frequently present without examining, which reassured me a little, and then I got several recs for the book in the urban fantasy December ramble, and I decided to take the plunge. I'm glad that I did, because I blazed through the first one and really enjoyed it, although I'm a little apprehensive that the sequels may not work for me so well.
Spoilers! I like the worldbuilding. It's not super-original or anything, but I also don't read urban fantasy for super-original world-building, you know? I like the way the Masquerade is handled, or, rather, the gradual lifting of the Masquerade, the faerie reservations and the werewolves looking for their poster child (and I liked that it ended up being David the heroic extractions specialist who ended up filling this role). I like vampires having a racketeering business (and the term "seethe" for a group/nest/whatever of them), and werewolves being control freak types. I liked the idea, which I assume will be explored in more detail in later books, that the fae, vampires, and werewolves are all Old World creatures, immigrants in the US, and skinwalkers like Mercy are the remnants of the native population. I also like that the series is set in the Pacific Northwest -- it's not really "home", but it's more in my neck of the woods than stories set in Chicago or Louisiana.
Of course, most of the worldbuilding is spent exploring werewolf dynamics, and I did think this was quite well done. The way the creation of new werewolves is brutal and frequently ends in tragedy was something I haven't seen touched on in other urban fantasy books, and the downsides of the condition are given at least as much prominence as the upsides (in fact, I find it a little hard to see why someone would want to become a werewolf in this world) -- the low birth rates and miscarriages even for human mates, the barrenness of werewolf women, the way that even those who survive the initial transformation may need to be put down if they don't work out their control issues, the average lifespan of only 10 years -- that's all really harsh, and I liked that. I also liked Mercy's sort-of adjacent position, where she isn't of the pack but grew up among werewolves, and how she had to negotiate the messed up pack dynamics as a strong-willed, independent woman with no status of her own. Dr Carter's case was something I found particularly touching, where what he had become was so abhorrent to him that he couldn't really coexist with the wolf, and, actually, David Christiansen's case, too, where he still needed a pack but it was an all-human pack. And the intersection of werewolf rules and social issues, like in the case of Warren and his lover -- it's actually pretty cool to see gay marriage (indirectly) come up as relevant to werewolf politics, you know? And the difficulties of werewolf suicide (except by drowning, apparently). It's neat stuff!
Of the characters, so far Mercy is the one I like the most, which is actually quite unusual for me, as I tend to fixate on side characters rather than protagonists. But I really like Mercy -- she is unusual without being a Mary Sue. She's good at things that it makes sense for her to be good at, like fixing cars, and she's reasonably strong and can fight pretty well for reasons that make sense, but she is not the best / strongest ever, but there are also hints that she has room to grow (like her resistance to magic), which is good, too. I also like the fact that she has a family (her mother, stepfather, and stepsisters), even if she doesn't interact with them very much -- I am looking forward to seeing them in subsequent books, as I assume we'll get to.
I don't have particularly strong feelings about other characters, but they seem like a nice, well-balanced cast. I like Zee the "gremlin" with obviously more to him than meets the eye, and Stefan the friendly vampire who likes Scooby-Do, and Tony the undercover cop, and Kyle the divorce lawyer (Warren's human lover). I'd liked Mac, too, and was expecting him to stick around as a sidekick, but, alas. Presumably Gabriel Sandoval, Mercy's new assistant, will be filling the sidekick role, but so far I'm less interested in him or his mother. Oh, and there's the Russian witch, whom I like OK, especially the way she is always referred to by name + patronymic, but I have to note that "Adamya" is the stupidest attempt at a Russian nickname for "Adam" ever (like, seriously, there are four options I can think of that a Russian person might come up with, but this is NOT one of them. That is not how Russian nicknames work XD)
The werewolves are actually probably still the least interesting to me, heh. David Christiansen is the most interesting one so far, but I could see Darryl and his chemistry teacher wife becoming interesting to me also with more exposure. Adam is an OK love interest, I guess, but it's taken one chapter exactly for me to come to the conclusion that I like Adam and Mercy better when all there was between them is UST. So, I can already tell the love triangle nonsense is going to be really annoying to me. Especially as I don't find Samuel interesting at all. Bran the Marrok is a bit more interesting (but also a wolf-y person named Bran just makes me think of ASOIAF, honestly XP)
There was plot! It was actually reasonably riveting as far as plots go, but mostly a good introduction to Mercy's backstory and all the various supernatural types she regularly interacts with. Gerry's plan was incredibly complex and I had a hard time believing in it, but by that point it didn't really matter, and I guess I can write it off as something a desparate, guilty son would come up with. Anyway, the plot is not the point.
A few quotes:
"It is one of those nondenominational churches so busy not condemning anyone that it has little power to attract a steady congregation."
"Your vampire friend will never know that his van held a corpse other than his own."
So, this was a good, quick, fun book to read after the Matthew Swift one (which was good, but neither quick nor fun for me), and I've already put in a hold for #2.
Currently reading: The Midnight Mayor (in hard copy, since I had it lying around from before), Cast in Ruin (on the Kindle, from the library), and Inda (I went and picked up my hold today)
*
Snowflake Challenge:
Day 10: In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.
Let's see... (not so much asking for these as would just be happy if it existed, in greater numbers or, in some cases, at all...)
- Dragaera: Vlad/Morrolan fic, or just a chance to talk about the ship, or Morrolan individually, really. I'm pretty sure I've read all the Morrolan fic in online existence, and likely most of the meta as well, and I need fresh fuel for my obsession!
- Vorkosiverse/Firefly: Miles Vorkosigan/River Tam fanworks and/or squee (or Firefly/Vorkosigan crossovers in general, meaning, crossovers involving actual characters)
- ASOIAF: Tywin/Olenna AU (AU either in the "modern AU" sense, or a Westeros one where Joanna never existed, e.g.), fic or art, and Jaime/Loras art (which I've already been lucky enough to receive once, as a Halloween treat from sephystabbity <3!)
- Rivers of London: fortunately, philomytha is already writing all the fic I want to read (very nice of you! ;), but I'd love to see art of the gang, especially Nightingale and Peter, for purposes of likely iconization...
- crossover art with Vorkosigan or RoL characters in AU settings -- Hogwarts houses, with their daemons, whatever. I just love crossover art!
Day 11: Stretch yourself a little and try something new. Go play in a new fandom or with a new pairing or trope. Try creating a different kind of fanwork. Or check out some types of fanworks that are new to you. (The recs from Day 1, Day 3, and Day 9 might be a good place to start!) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
I read some RPF (...Pinto) and txtspeak fic from the Snowflake "didn't think I'd like it" recs, and also dipped into Matthew Swift fanworks, including this cute art and this fusion fic with LotR (LotR characters and setting, but using the magic worldbuilding of Matthew Swift).
1. Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift #1) -- So. Matthew Swift. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not going to be able to avoid comparing this book (and the sequels, I suspect) to Rivers of London, probably a lot. And I didn't love it as much as I loved RoL, and I will want to dig into the reasons. But for the record? I want all the crossover fic now (more on which below).
I'm not sure how to describe my impressions of the book, but it's something like... OK, say I really like cranberries. But I am not a fan of oat bran; I don't hate it or anything, but I don't consume it for pleasure either. Reading A Madness of Angles was like eating an oat bran muffin with cranberries. It is a really good oat bran muffin, as far as oat bran muffins go! But the part I'm actually enjoying are the cranberries, of which, as you may imagine, there is a lot less than of oat bran. Which is to say, the parts of the book I really enjoyed were buried in the parts I was mostly indifferent towards. It was totally worth it for the cranberries, and I can appreciate the muffin aesthetically, but I would've been happier just eating cranberries straight from the box. (RoL, for the record? is a muffin made entirely out of cranberries, with a few random flakes of oat bran. With my name picked out on top with yet more cranberries. But that is neither here nor there.)
Let us delve into the cranberry/oat bran ratio in detail: spoilers!
The writing was mostly oat bran for me. The writing is quite beautiful in places, and has profound bits that worked for me. I really liked the dialogue for the most part; there are some very distinctive speech patterns I really enjoyed, like Sinclair's and Dr Seah's, and even Matthew came alive for me when he actually spoke. But there is a tendency towards soliloquizing that I get bored of very quickly, a piling of description that feels almost Dickensian and makes me react accordingly -- i.e. once it gets to the point of diminishing returns (which for me happens about 2-4 lines in, on average), my eyes start glazing over and it becomes very hard to combat the desire to just skim -- like during the extended litterbug opening scene, and every magical battle that follows. The sentence fragments and angel interludes just felt pretentious without adding much to my experience, which is totally a matter of taste, I concede, but there you go. But some things worked really, really well, like the creepy simplicity of "Hello, Matthew's fire". ikel89 did point out that the drowning-by-description could make in-universe sense for a sorcerer who is so immersed in the life of the city (and I could see the new-to-life angels similarly taking everything in), but it is such an ineffective style for me personally. I guess the book was like 500 pages, but I thought I would've been just as happy or happier with a text half that length. (In contrast, the cynical, understated narration of RoL works so, SO much better for me on the whole, even though I think I might actually like Griffin's dialogue more. This is obviously a matter of taste, because I've seen multiple readers complain that Peter's narration feels weirdly detached to them, but for me, it works perfectly. And everybody praises Griffin's writing (which is impressive, just... not in a way I like); so, yeah...)
The worldbuilding is probably the toughest thing for me to distill into cranberries or bran, but, really, what it is is oat bran covered in a solid coating of cranberries. It is really neat worldbuilding at the abstract level, the way sorcery works in this universe, and the way it is distinct from magic as practiced by magicians and warlocks (though I'd like to get an external point of view on the comparison, too, since Matthew is not exactly unbiased). I liked the magic of the White Clan, the dreamlike pursuit from graffiti pointer to graffiti pointer, the garishly painted tiger rubbing against Matthew as it comes alive and squelching by on dripping paws. I liked the description of that feeling of being lost in a place you know which is the source of the bikers' magic. That paper-powered liches/golems were really cool, and very, very creepy. The early scene where Matthew thwarts Hunger with his Oystercard was quite simply awesome. Offerings to the Last Train were pretty neat, too. But there are only so many descriptions of pulling power out of wires that are interesting to read, and the tendency towards overdescription sapped the, er, magic from the magic in many, many cases. The very industrial/technology-based feeling of urban sorcery also didn't particularly resonate with me -- it's a neat idea, and quite refreshing to see a very different take on this than the usual "magic fries technology" thing, but aluminium-winged fairies and supernatural creatures who all sound like the screaming of brakes are less intrinsically interesting to me, I guess, than the regular kind.
The anthropomorphic personifications, or whatever the Bag Lady (who feels downright Pratchettian!), the Beggar King, and so on are, were really, really wonderful. The urban dragon, a "beast of forgotten and disobeyed things", is pretty brilliant! The Electric Blue Angels themselves are a very neat idea, too. (This is the one area where this book worked better for me than RoL, whose supernatural entities tend to leave me cold.)
The tone is very bran-y indeed. Which is not a value judgement, really, it's just that the book is a lot darker than I prefer my urban fantasy to be, with very little there to lighten the mood. Maybe it gets a bit lighter in the sequels? Because Matthew starting the book off with all his friends dead except for the two who are probably opposing him was pretty depressing, but the ending managed to be even more depressing, so, like, it would be nice if something good happened every once in a while, in a more cheerful mode than "Oda didn't actually shoot him this time, it was just a joke". And even the urban environment is a lot darker and more grimy than you usually get in urban fantasy, without the stylized slickness of noir. The pigeons everywhere, the litter and decay... It's just depressing (except I like the rats!) And, of course, all the death, dismemberment, and betrayal is kind of a downer, too.
There were some things I liked about Matthew -- the way he keeps pointing out to everyone that he did not kill Khay, that Lee was dead to begin with, so it wasn't really like killing him, and his "it's complicated" explanations and relationship with the angels -- I liked those details. But mostly I find the people Matthew comes across a lot more interesting and likeable than Matthew himself, and wish he'd spend more time interacting with them than inside his own head.
Characters I liked a lot and hope(d) to see more of -- Sinclair, who is super-intriguing in his concerned citizenry (I was so happy he didn't die! I kind of expect him to become my favorite); Dr Seah and her bedside manner; Jean the nurse (does she show up again? I hope she does!). I had also liked Blackjack and was sorry to see he was the traitor. I'd liked Dana Mikeda a lot, too, especially the fact that her reaction to the "yer a wizard, Harry" revelation was first 'how do I make it stop', and that she insisted on boundary conditions and asking questions in the apprentice relationship, but, well, hopefully she'll be back in flashbacks, at least? Oda I'm reserving judgement on; I like her interaction with Matthew, but the whole Order thing rubs me the wrong way a little, hypocritical extermists that they are.
Finally, Bakker! Bakker is a brilliant antagonist, and I thought the combination of ruthless sorcerer in pursuit of immortality who is happy to have people killed or worse for his goal with the kindly father figure was really, really well done, and the whiplash between the two, both as experienced by Matthew and for the reader, was quite palpable. (Poking around Tumblr has brought up the fancast of Ian McKellen for Bakker, and YESPLZ!)
As I said, the writing was a hurdle as often as a feature, but there were quite a few quotes I really liked:
re: line for the London Eye: "there was also a family from, judging by the accent, somewhere in south-east England, whose youngest child was only now discovering her fear of heights."
re: Sinclair: "a belly constrained by a shiny waistcoat like a straining bulkhead, any second about to explode a shrapnel of buttons."
"'Yes,' I said, slumping across the couch with the sudden, absolute certainty that coffee was the thing around which every ambition in my life revolved."
"Merton -- a place that I had always regarded as something of a fiction spread by the enemies of London and was surprised to find so real and large."
"At one moment we were riding a billion dollars through Switzerland, and seeping through the radios of a NASA shuttle about to launch."
"No one had told me that vengeance could be so boring."
Matthew and Vera:
M: "What's a mostly properly elected head?"
V: "It's generally accepted that if there was an election, I'd win. So I figure -- why bother?"
"I saw the bikers slash through the air with their crowbars, and as they did, the gashed air poured out fire from where it was torn."
re: the Downers -- "they felt that the city, the true city of necessary pulsing daily functions, was most alive."
re: paintings of the White Clan: "A pair of cyclists made entirely out of human ears started peddling with their tiny ear-feet."
Matthew sat "beside a large red button with the alluring notice 'THIS BUTTON DOES NOTHING' stuck up next to it, a label that troubled and confused us throughout almost the entire performance. [...] As we walked past the big red button, our hand reached out instinctively and, as fast as only the spark can fly, we pressed it. Nothing happened. My face turned read, and, head bowed, we sidled away, feeling all the more bemused."
re: Bakker in his wheelchair: "he wore it like a model might wear a pair of glasses, as if at any moment he might leap out of it to a cry of 'Why, Mr Bakker, you're beautiful!', and amaze the audience with his agility and strength. It didn't look like a tool for dealing with his paralysis, nor the thing in which he would almost certainly die, but just a piece of metal clothing, or some family-inherited piece of furniture that he'd sat in as a lively child."
Bakker, to the angels: "You... things of little surplus electricity, you odd remnants of feeling, confused signals, what's your anger about? You've been given a gift beyond the wildest comprehension -- you are alive!"
"and for a moment, in that place, I could feel every pigeon like they were hairs on my head, blowing in the wind, and taste every rat like their claws were the serrated edges of my own teeth."
Jean: "Men in bandages feel so righteous it's almost unbearable."
Dana, to Matthew: "You know, for a man possessed -- sorry -- in a complicated relationship with mystical entities of bloody magic and forgotten life -- you're pretty useless when it comes to a tight situation, aren't you?"
"a man who looks at everything and sees a tool to be used, a force to be manipulated, rather than just good, old-fashioned stuff doing its thing, should not be free of the restraints of humanity."
So, that's kind of the worked/didn't work breakdown for me. And/but I find that, now that I'm no longer reading the book, I have more positive feelings about it, retroactively, because the things staying with me are the things that I liked, of which there were plenty, and not my frustration with having to fight my way through the overdescriptive and odd prose. I absolutely intend to continue with the series (I have The Midnight Mayor in my backpack right now, in fact).
And now, I would like to see a crossover where Matthew's London and Peter Grant's London end up spilling into each other across a thin spot in the veil between universes, because there are a number of interactions I would find most interesting! spoilers for both canons!
- Peter would be delighted to discover a world where magic and technology are so compatible (and in fact would probably make a better sorcerer than Newtonian wizard, given his space cadet tendencies and affinity for random bits of architecture)
- Bakker would be very, very interested in Nightingale, just in case his aging backwards thing is something that could be induced in him, too
- Nightingale and Sinclair discussing the nature of arrangements and how they relate to keeping the peace would be most interesting as well
- Dr Seah and Dr Walid swapping patient stories might be interesting (possibly Jean the nurse, too)
- Vera and Zach would make kind of a cute couple I feel.
2. Patricia Briggs, Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1) -- I've been seeing these books around for a while, and on the one hand wanting to read them because I'd read something else by Briggs and liked her writing, and I kept hearing good things about them, but on the other hand, werewolves just aren't really my thing -- I've found weres to be the least interesting of supernatural types for me in thos urban fantasy books that have everybody in them, the Dresden Files and the Hollows and the Sookie Stackhouse books, so it didn't seem wise to embark on a series that focused on them. Also, the covers are awful. But last time we were having brunch and talking urban fantasy, lodessa said this was one werewolf series that was very aware of the messed up dynamics that werewolf books frequently present without examining, which reassured me a little, and then I got several recs for the book in the urban fantasy December ramble, and I decided to take the plunge. I'm glad that I did, because I blazed through the first one and really enjoyed it, although I'm a little apprehensive that the sequels may not work for me so well.
Spoilers! I like the worldbuilding. It's not super-original or anything, but I also don't read urban fantasy for super-original world-building, you know? I like the way the Masquerade is handled, or, rather, the gradual lifting of the Masquerade, the faerie reservations and the werewolves looking for their poster child (and I liked that it ended up being David the heroic extractions specialist who ended up filling this role). I like vampires having a racketeering business (and the term "seethe" for a group/nest/whatever of them), and werewolves being control freak types. I liked the idea, which I assume will be explored in more detail in later books, that the fae, vampires, and werewolves are all Old World creatures, immigrants in the US, and skinwalkers like Mercy are the remnants of the native population. I also like that the series is set in the Pacific Northwest -- it's not really "home", but it's more in my neck of the woods than stories set in Chicago or Louisiana.
Of course, most of the worldbuilding is spent exploring werewolf dynamics, and I did think this was quite well done. The way the creation of new werewolves is brutal and frequently ends in tragedy was something I haven't seen touched on in other urban fantasy books, and the downsides of the condition are given at least as much prominence as the upsides (in fact, I find it a little hard to see why someone would want to become a werewolf in this world) -- the low birth rates and miscarriages even for human mates, the barrenness of werewolf women, the way that even those who survive the initial transformation may need to be put down if they don't work out their control issues, the average lifespan of only 10 years -- that's all really harsh, and I liked that. I also liked Mercy's sort-of adjacent position, where she isn't of the pack but grew up among werewolves, and how she had to negotiate the messed up pack dynamics as a strong-willed, independent woman with no status of her own. Dr Carter's case was something I found particularly touching, where what he had become was so abhorrent to him that he couldn't really coexist with the wolf, and, actually, David Christiansen's case, too, where he still needed a pack but it was an all-human pack. And the intersection of werewolf rules and social issues, like in the case of Warren and his lover -- it's actually pretty cool to see gay marriage (indirectly) come up as relevant to werewolf politics, you know? And the difficulties of werewolf suicide (except by drowning, apparently). It's neat stuff!
Of the characters, so far Mercy is the one I like the most, which is actually quite unusual for me, as I tend to fixate on side characters rather than protagonists. But I really like Mercy -- she is unusual without being a Mary Sue. She's good at things that it makes sense for her to be good at, like fixing cars, and she's reasonably strong and can fight pretty well for reasons that make sense, but she is not the best / strongest ever, but there are also hints that she has room to grow (like her resistance to magic), which is good, too. I also like the fact that she has a family (her mother, stepfather, and stepsisters), even if she doesn't interact with them very much -- I am looking forward to seeing them in subsequent books, as I assume we'll get to.
I don't have particularly strong feelings about other characters, but they seem like a nice, well-balanced cast. I like Zee the "gremlin" with obviously more to him than meets the eye, and Stefan the friendly vampire who likes Scooby-Do, and Tony the undercover cop, and Kyle the divorce lawyer (Warren's human lover). I'd liked Mac, too, and was expecting him to stick around as a sidekick, but, alas. Presumably Gabriel Sandoval, Mercy's new assistant, will be filling the sidekick role, but so far I'm less interested in him or his mother. Oh, and there's the Russian witch, whom I like OK, especially the way she is always referred to by name + patronymic, but I have to note that "Adamya" is the stupidest attempt at a Russian nickname for "Adam" ever (like, seriously, there are four options I can think of that a Russian person might come up with, but this is NOT one of them. That is not how Russian nicknames work XD)
The werewolves are actually probably still the least interesting to me, heh. David Christiansen is the most interesting one so far, but I could see Darryl and his chemistry teacher wife becoming interesting to me also with more exposure. Adam is an OK love interest, I guess, but it's taken one chapter exactly for me to come to the conclusion that I like Adam and Mercy better when all there was between them is UST. So, I can already tell the love triangle nonsense is going to be really annoying to me. Especially as I don't find Samuel interesting at all. Bran the Marrok is a bit more interesting (but also a wolf-y person named Bran just makes me think of ASOIAF, honestly XP)
There was plot! It was actually reasonably riveting as far as plots go, but mostly a good introduction to Mercy's backstory and all the various supernatural types she regularly interacts with. Gerry's plan was incredibly complex and I had a hard time believing in it, but by that point it didn't really matter, and I guess I can write it off as something a desparate, guilty son would come up with. Anyway, the plot is not the point.
A few quotes:
"It is one of those nondenominational churches so busy not condemning anyone that it has little power to attract a steady congregation."
"Your vampire friend will never know that his van held a corpse other than his own."
So, this was a good, quick, fun book to read after the Matthew Swift one (which was good, but neither quick nor fun for me), and I've already put in a hold for #2.
Currently reading: The Midnight Mayor (in hard copy, since I had it lying around from before), Cast in Ruin (on the Kindle, from the library), and Inda (I went and picked up my hold today)
*
Snowflake Challenge:
Day 10: In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.
Let's see... (not so much asking for these as would just be happy if it existed, in greater numbers or, in some cases, at all...)
- Dragaera: Vlad/Morrolan fic, or just a chance to talk about the ship, or Morrolan individually, really. I'm pretty sure I've read all the Morrolan fic in online existence, and likely most of the meta as well, and I need fresh fuel for my obsession!
- Vorkosiverse/Firefly: Miles Vorkosigan/River Tam fanworks and/or squee (or Firefly/Vorkosigan crossovers in general, meaning, crossovers involving actual characters)
- ASOIAF: Tywin/Olenna AU (AU either in the "modern AU" sense, or a Westeros one where Joanna never existed, e.g.), fic or art, and Jaime/Loras art (which I've already been lucky enough to receive once, as a Halloween treat from sephystabbity <3!)
- Rivers of London: fortunately, philomytha is already writing all the fic I want to read (very nice of you! ;), but I'd love to see art of the gang, especially Nightingale and Peter, for purposes of likely iconization...
- crossover art with Vorkosigan or RoL characters in AU settings -- Hogwarts houses, with their daemons, whatever. I just love crossover art!
Day 11: Stretch yourself a little and try something new. Go play in a new fandom or with a new pairing or trope. Try creating a different kind of fanwork. Or check out some types of fanworks that are new to you. (The recs from Day 1, Day 3, and Day 9 might be a good place to start!) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
I read some RPF (...Pinto) and txtspeak fic from the Snowflake "didn't think I'd like it" recs, and also dipped into Matthew Swift fanworks, including this cute art and this fusion fic with LotR (LotR characters and setting, but using the magic worldbuilding of Matthew Swift).