Book review: Mind the Gap
Christopher Golden is one of my favourite obscure fantasy writers, but I wasn't entirely convinced by his The Veil trilogy. But I enjoyed myself a lot more with this, co-written by Tim Lebbon and the first in the Hidden Cities series. In Mind the Gap the city in question is London, and as the title suggests Golden and Lebbon are among the many writers to be fascinated by the London Underground and the many "lost" tunnels and stations that are still in existence but long since fallen out of use. A 17-year-old girl returns home to find her mother murdered and herself hunted by the sinister "Uncles" who've looked after them both for years. She ends up hiding in the hidden tunnels of the Underground with a modern-day Fagin's gang of petty thieves. Although the story kicks off quickly I thought the novel floundered in tone for a few chapters before settling down into an involving story that mixes the supernatural with the simply a bit weird. One annoyance for me though was that with a British writer on board there's no reason why some of Golden's Americanisms coming from English characters couldn't have been changed; there's a few too many "gotten"s for my liking. But a fun book in any case.