Book review: Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

Alif the Unseen is the story of a teenage hacker living in a generic Arabic emirate somewhere in the Gulf region just before the Arab Spring. He's good with computers, but immature, and useless when it comes to girls.

When, after some girl trouble, Alif creates a clever little trojan that can identify a person online regardless of which device, handle, or website they use, and make them invisible to the person using the computer, he unwittingly makes himself the target of the state security forces. Add to that a delivery of a cryptic book of fairy tales (The 1001 Days), and the ominous realisation that his ex-girlfriend's future husband might just be the chief of the secret police, and things are not looking good at all for Alif...

Things come to a head. Alif, together with Dina, the devout girl living next door, have to run for their lives, stumbling into the realm of Vikram the Vampire and the djinn.

This was the second time I read Alif the Unseen, this time with Passau International Book Club. It was interesting to compare the book as it is with my memory of it. In my memory, this was a contemporary fantasy novel, filled with djinn and mythology and grand adventures. In reality, this book has a fairly slow start, gradually approaching the supernatural and slowly immersing its characters in their adventures. For a good while, this is simply a book about a stupid teenager being annoyingly stupid, in the Middle East.

As ever with G Willow Wilson, it's also a book about Islamic culture. In the graphic novel Cairo, she wrote about Egypt and featured a young American tourist who ended up much more immersed than she'd ever expected. In Alif the Unseen, she wrote about Muslims of varying degrees of devoutness, and the story features a young American woman who has converted to Islam (as the author herself has done). It's hard not to see the American characters are being a kind of avatar for the author, and the books as a bi-product of her own life journey.

Alif the Unseen is not an uncritical look at the people and cultures in the Gulf region - but it is very intentionally a book that is infused with religion and Islam. The most sensible and good characters are also the ones who are more devout, while all the mess is created by non-devout Muslims who play lip service to their religion. Characters have little rants about Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, or Western hopes of an Islamic Enlightenment.  In the world of Wilson's stories, Islam is Good. To give her credit, not-Islam is not Evil, but as a reader who views all religions as aberrations and poison, the obvious fondness for Islam in the book was a little annoying.

But, as I said, Wilson is not uncritical of the problems that beset Arabic cultures. Race and racism is a huge issue: Alif is a half-breed, with an Arab father and an Indian-born mother. Dina is of Egyptian descent. Both are not very high up the racial pecking order. Misogyny is a huge problem. Alif is basically a sexist little shit at the start of the story (though no more so than Western teenage boys were back when I was young, and presumably still are). The difference is that one gets a sense that growing out of misgoynystic thinking is distinctly more optional in this culture than it is in the West. (Well, then came Donald Trump and his "boy talk" and we are all reminded that some people's minds never move beyond the most puerile and sneering versions of themselves). The book even touches upon the fetishisation of women's virginity that is still a blight on women's freedoms in Arab countries.  Alif the Unseen shows the real world pretty much how it is, so it's a relief that much of the book is filled with magic and the mythical.

If you can stick with a gradual beginning, rather than the plunge-into-magic that most contemporary fantasy novels now employ, Alif the Unseen is absolutely worth your time. Its setting is different, authentic, and interesting. The book might have some religious themes in it, but it's a jolly good read, filled with authentic characters, some of whom grow over the course of the novel. And it's filled with adventure, dancing on the tightrope between scary oppressive regimes and magic and monsters. Best of all: this is not a grimdark, cynical, bitter book. At its heart, it believes in goodness in people, which makes the book a joy to read.

Rating: 4/5


Here's G Willow Wilson talking about her comic book series Ms Marvel:

Review: The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch

The October Man is a short novel set in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London / Peter Grant contemporary fantasy universe. Only it's not set in London and Peter Grant isn't in it...

When I first heard that Ben Aaronovitch was writing a novel set in Germany, I thought that meant Peter Grant was going on a bigger outing. So far, he's been to London, London, London, rural Hereford and London. I didn't realise it was going to be a spin-off about people who know of Peter Grant (thanks largely to spy agencies), but who have not appeared in any of the previous novels in the series. So I was quite intrigued when, some pages in, I finally realised that this book was going to be something different.

Tobias Winter, our protagonist and first person narrator, is a young German police officer specialising in the supernatural. He is apprenticed to Germany's number one (and only) police wizard. In The October Man, he gets sent to Trier to solve a gruesome murder in the German wine-growing region around the Mosel river, with the help of a local policewoman.

If that premise sounds a little... familiar... then it's because Tobias Winter is the German Peter Grant. The setup of the German magic police might not include a building like the Folly, but apart from that, it feels very, very familiar. There is even an enthusiastic forensic coroner of magic corpses who helps the team, and there are Rivers to talk to...

Tobias Winter also has a very similar narrative voice to Peter Grant. He might not comment about architecture (although he does comment about the history  of places a lot), but apart from that, he has the same sense of humour and wit, the same way of observing things, the same approach to modern policing. His parents might not be into jazz, but Tobias has the same bemused affection for them that Peter has for his...

After the conclusion of the faceless man arc in London, I can see why it must have been tempting for the author to escape to a different angle for a bit. However, it feels a tad disappointing that the different angle turns out to be not that different after all.

The October Man is a curious novel: it's fun and readable and has most of the things you love about the Rivers of London series. Except for the cast. But it has a cast of equivalents instead...

Its biggest advantage turned out not to be the different setting, but the more compact list of characters. Peter Grant's universe has grown to include a big crew of friends, colleagues and recurring characters: at times, Lies Sleeping had felt like an exercise in story logistics akin to pulling the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe together into a tentpole ensemble story. The October Man goes back to basics and echoes Rivers of London more than any other Peter Grant novel since. Its biggest weakness is that it manages to feel weirdly derivative of its own series. It's worth reading and good fun, even so.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms

I was in the mood to read something fun. After browsing the unread books on my Kindle for ages, I decided to re-read, instead, and it's been a while since I first read The Dragons of Heaven. Fortunately, the book was as good as I remembered.

The Dragons of Heaven is set in a world where there are superheroes, alliances of superheroes, magic, myths, and monsters. Missy, our protagonist, is the grand daughter of Mitchell Masters, a.k.a. 1950s superhero Mister Mystic. His gift (and her inherited power) is to tap into the shadow realm, which is useful for cloaking the face, for hiding from sight, for drawing forth demonic monstrous shadow creatures, and, if the shit really hits the fan, for diving into, traversing the hellscape while trying not to be noticed or destroyed by monsters, and emerging elsewhere.

The novel is told in chapters alternating between two strands: "then", and "now".

Then, a few years ago, teenage Missy first dallied with the idea of turning masked vigilante. After an early foray goes disastrously wrong (she gets shot by a professional superhero), she makes her way to China like her grandfather before her, to find a dragon who might teach her martial arts and Chinese mystic powers and stuff.

Now, a plot involving triads and assorted villains is under way, a plot which Mr Mystic gets entangled in while trying to fight crime in Chinatown.

The Dragons of Heaven is, as the cover promises, "A hell of a lot of fun." It's got a huge sense of humour, a massive dose of fan-love for all kinds of geeky fiction (Missy references Narnia, Princess Bride, The Last Unicorn, etc. etc. etc.), and a deep fascination with the superhero genre. At one point, Argent, this world's SHIELD, force Mr Mystic to work together with a very Captain America-like hero. At the same time, this is a world where superheroes are into their second or third generations, and it's openly acknowledged that many heroes of previous generations were sexist, racist, dinosaurs, in some of their attitudes.

The final ingredient is (Asian) mythology, with dragons, fox spirits, ogres, man-eating witches, very different unicorns, and more. Sometimes, mixing lots of settings / ingredients in a story can be a bit gimmicky, but Alyc Helms succeeds at bringing everything together into a whole that is as engrossing, and as enchanting, as Neil Gaiman's Sandman - i.e. she's up there with the very best of mythblenders. The fox spirits were particularly memorable. Fortunately, her style is a bit more light-handed than Gaiman's: the novel is genuinely, joyfully funny, especially early on. It includes one of the funniest romance / courtship / seduction plots I have ever come across.

If there is a flaw, it is that one sequence stretches the suspension of disbelief a bit far. Dragons? Magic? Monstrous shadow dimensions? No problem. But the exact conditions under which three trials are faced and endured? Ouch. OUCH. Jesus Christ, OUCH!!! Nope, not buying it. Impossible.

Well, and the beginning, even on the second read, felt a little disorienting. I took a while to properly get the alternating then-now chapters. Sure, I should have paid closer attention to the word before each chapter, but I wonder if perhaps the Kindle formatting was off (there were no whitespaces between scenes within chapters, so maybe the chapter intros have bigger "Then" / "Now" tags in print than they do on Kindle, too. All I can say is that the Kindle version felt confusing and visual cues were missing or not noticeable enough).

Anyway: The Dragons of Heaven. Superheroes, mythologies, humour, romance, grand adventures, all in a novel that is pacey, exciting, and full of memorable and likeable characters. In a word, awesome. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5/5.

PS: I also wrote a review of The Dragons of Heaven the first time I read it.

10 Brilliant Books You've Never Heard Of: Perfect Gifts For Bookaholics

A couple of years ago, I wrote a list of Brilliant Books You've Never Heard Of. As Christmas is coming up, I thought it's time to update and expand the list!

Below are a few awesome books which even your bibliophile friends probably haven't read yet. These are books which probably never made it to a Waterstones 3 for 2 table, books which don't appear on the Goodreads shelves of avid readers I follow. Some are older books, which were moderately successful in their time, but which are largely unfamiliar to millennials. So, you know, perfect gifts.

Mood: Happy, Adventurous

For those who like fun-filled stories filled with thrills and adventure

The \ Occasional / Diamond Thief is a YA adventure scifi novel.

Kia Ugiagbe, is a 15-year-old girl on a distant planet. On her father's deathbed, he reveals a secret: hidden at the back of a drawer, there is a huge diamond. Her father, she realises, must have stolen it!

Fast paced, fun, and tense, The Occasional Diamond Thief is great fun. Kia is easy to root for: she's hard-working, not brilliant at everything she does, but dedicated. She has a sense of humour and just the right amount of cheek.

There is a sequel, which is just as good. Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

The Dragons of Heaven is set in a world where superheroes and some kinds of magic are real.

Our hero is Mr Mystic. Able to control shadows and even drift from the 'real' world into a shadow realm, Mr Mystic is a fedora wearing, British-sounding, Chinese-magic-wielding martial arts expert. Oh, and she's also a woman, Missy Masters, who inherited the superpowers from the original Mr Mystic.

If you want a book that is fun, funny, thrilling, a bit romantic and sexy, joyful, whip-smart, and a good romp, this really should be up your street.

Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Mood: Literary, coming of age, but exciting

For those who like coming of age novels with complexity, warmth and a plot that moves. 

The Chicken Soup Murder is told from the perspective of Michael, a primary school boy about to move on to "Big School".

However, all is not well in his world. His best friend's father has recently died. His neighbour's dog has died. And now his neighbour Irma is dating a policeman, whose son bullies Michael.

Then, Irma dies, and Michael suspects foul play.

The Chicken Soup Murder is a warm, addictive, gently amusing novel about the everyday tragedy that is death, but also a novel about childhood and growing up.

Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Konstantin is a biographical novel about a boy growing up in Russia,and becoming an oddball young man.

Konstantin is a boy with a huge imagination. After losing most of his hearing, he spends the rest of his life a bit removed from his peers. However, this is not at all a misery book. Konstantin is full of infectious enthusiasm, permanently fascinated, and brave, even foolhardy.

Beautiful prose and the energetic protagonist make this a joyful book. Read my full review of Konstantin to find out more.

 

Jasmine Nights is a coming-of-age novel set in 1963 Thailand. It’s the story of Little Frog / Justin, a 12-year-old boy from a very rich family. Justin is a somewhat eccentric, aloof boy. Then, he is gradually nudged out of his shell by his grandmother, and by the kids who live next door...

Jasmine Nights is a story touching on race and prejudice, finding out about sex, Thailand, the periphery of the Vietnam War, different social classes, but above all else, it is the story of a lonely boy becoming slightly less lonely and growing up a little. Amusing and complex, it reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Read my full review of Jasmine Nights to find out more.

Mood: Literary Science Fiction and Fantasy

For those who like their speculative fiction thoughtful and ambitious.

The Falling Woman is a classic that few millennials will have read. It won a Nebula Award in 1987.

Elizabeth is an divorced archaeologist on a dig in Central America. She can glimpse ghosts of the past, especially at dusk and dawn. One day, one of the spectres looks at her and starts to talk...

Diane is her daughter, joining her on her dig after a bereavement. Diane hasn't seen Elizabeth since childhood, and isn't sure what she has gone out to find.

The story builds up its world and characters one step at a time. Gradually, it gains tension, a sense of the uncanny, a foreboding feel... Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Sequela is the debut novel of a Scottish poet. It tells the story of a scientist whose job is to create sexually transmitted viruses (STVs). In this future, STVs have become fashionable: they indicate whom one has slept with. Each symptom pattern is linked to different powerbrokers, and every 'player' is trying to have the most rarefied rash pattern.

It's high concept, but really, this is a character-based thriller. The tension comes from social interactions, from office politics, from personal relationships and how they develop...  It's a unique and frighteningly convincing novel.

Read my full review of Sequela to find out more.

 

The Beauty starts years after all the women have died. Men and boys have survived, seemingly unaffected by the bizarre fungus plague that wiped out womankind. It's a very short novel. It's postapocalyptic, it's horror, it's science fiction and it's unlike anything I've read: it's full of ideas, atmosphere and the uncanny, and it sticks with you long after you'd finished reading.

Read my full review of The Beauty to find out more.

 

In Great Waters is set in an alternative history where merpeople are real. They are not like humans: fiercer, more direct, more single-minded. They can interbreed with humans, which results in physical and mental differences. Thus we meet Henry / Whistle, a crossbreed who is born in the sea but grows into adulthood among humans.

In Great Waters is outstanding because of its immersive, gradual worldbuilding. Tension builds up slowly: by the time your fascination is satisfied, the story has sneakily turned into a thriller that can't be put down.

Read my full review of In Great Waters to find out more.

 

Mood: Childlike awe and terror

For those who remember how big and wonder-filled and scary the world was when we were kids... or for kids.

Oy Yew is a tiny boy who grows up sustaining himself on crumbs and the smells of food. One day, he is forced into servitude, first in a factory, then in a country mansion. His comrades in slavery are other waifs, children who arrived as boat people on tiny rafts.

But things are about to go from bad to worse: How come there have been so many accidents lately? What secrets lurk in the sinister Bone Room? And why is Master Jep suddenly so interested in Oy's thumbs?

This is a fantastically atmospheric novel. It's uncanny and tender and beautiful.  Even as an adult reader, I was on the edge of my seat. Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

What books would you add to the list?

Have you read any excellent, but underrated / not very widely known books lately? Add a comment, give some recommendations!

Review: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

Lies Sleeping is the seventh novel in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series. Chances are, if you like urban / contemporary fantasy, you will have given this series a try by now. If not: go out and buy Rivers of London right now. It's the first novel, and the beginning of the best urban fantasy series ever written.

Peter Grant is a Detective Inspector by now, having worked his way up from rookie (and apprentice wizard) to trusted professional (and ok wizard, though it seems his magical abilities have plateaued and aren't growing much between volumes). At this point in the series, the support cast includes dozens of people, including lots of policeman officers, extended families of Peter and the Rivers, several scientists / medics, and even a few others who are learning wizarding through officially sanctioned channels. So even though I've read every book, I struggled a bit to keep track of who's who. I may have to re-read the series in one go at some point.

One of the reasons the cast is so enormous is that this is the book of a major police operation, nicknamed "Operation Jennifer", with the aim of sorting out the Faceless Man problem once and for all. Meanwhile, Martin Chorley, the Faceless Man (an evil wizard) is busy, busy, busy, scheming to achieve some big objective that might change the world (or London) forevermore...

So far, the series has largely been alternating between "Faceless Man" novels (the even numbered ones) and "archetypal myth" novels (the odd numbered ones). I have consistently enjoyed the ones featuring some archetypal, atmospheric, folkloric style myths more. The Faceless Man could have been interesting, I guess, but after a big intro, his mystique fizzled out quickly. Now he's just plain Martin Chorley, bereft of charisma or mystique, and not really the creepy supervillain that he started out as. More powerful than Peter, but easily matched by Nightingale. So an odd-numbered novel about him felt a bit like it's cheating me out of one of the good ones. (They're all good, but the ones with little or no Faceless Man are simply better).

So, big police operation, Faceless Man, cast list of dozens... Lies Sleeping is not the most accessible novel. Anyone unfamiliar with the series won't find much to enjoy, and those familiar with it need a really good memory. On the bright side, Lesley is in this a lot, and her former place has been taken by Guleed, so Peter has a kick-ass female sidekick again, this time with a hijab, but otherwise very old-Lesley-like. Even better, we meet someone similar to Molly, and the sub plot around her is the best thing about the book (aside from a cameo by talking foxes). Despite those highlights, the book has the usual faceless-man-novel problem of being complicated, messy, and feeling a bit by-the-numbers, so it's not one of the highlights of the series. But this is the sort of series where even the weak entries are not bad.

Bring on the next one!

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Snowflake by Heide Goody & Iain Grant

Snowflake is a comic fantasy novel about Lori, a young millennial woman who finds, upon returning from a holiday, that her parents have sold the house, moved out, and kicked her out in absentia. And then magic shit starts to happen...

As comic fantasy novel, Snowflake gently bumbles along as Lori flounders from one disaster to another, raising chuckles and smiles. Lori is an amiably inept protagonist, likeable because she is naive and silly. The story, meanwhile, is a bit bewildering. For a long time, the plot can't decide whether it's about Lori's troubles with adulting, or about the magic stuff that adds a different dimension of chaos. It tries to do both, but with the result that it feels like neither strand is driving the story forward.

"Snowflake" is a term used a lot these days, often in online flamewars. My understanding was different from the authors' - I thought it's a derogatory term about overly sensitive, overly PC people who go on about trigger warnings and safe spaces a lot. The authors seem to have interpreted it as a term about young millennials who don't grow up, don't move their life into the phases of job-marriage-housebuying-children that traditional adulthood expects, but who loiter somewhere in a post-uni limbo of living in houseshares or with their parents, halfheartedly chasing dreams but ignoring careers, having relationships but nothing too serious or long-term. Lori certainly never seems to have any strong opinion or any obsession with safe spaces, which was a bit of a relief.

Comic fantasy is a genre that lives in the shadow of Terry Pratchett. I remember trying to write like him back when I was a teenager, and the huge plethora of books that were touted as "the next Terry Pratchett" at the time. Snowflake is one of those books that reads like Pratchett-light. It's amusing, but not a substitute for the master.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith

Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence is a novel about a girl whose parents are separating. It's also a novel about the Devil having a problem, and Hannah's mysterious but kooky grandfather, about adventures with demons and angels and about saving the world.

More importantly, it is a novel by Michael Marshall Smith. MMS is a writer whose career has been a bit non-linear. I first encountered his novels at the age of 17 when I went to University, and I immediately became a fan. Back then, in long-ago 1999, MMS was a writer of uber-cool, edgy, cyberpunk-inspired witty science fiction. His novels One Of Us and Spares have stuck with me for a long time. His short stories, collected in What You Make It, had sharp teeth. Then, in a surprise twist, MMS turned to writing serial killer thrillers as Michael Marshall. These, too, had teeth, and a unique sensibility, combining elements of horror (beyond Silence of the Lambs style violence) and creepy conspiracies into a brew that took serial killer thrillers into surreal and chilling arenas that they had not reached before. More recently, he has returned to writing short novels as MMS, some of which were adapted for TV. Now, Hannah Green - a novel that is, to my genuine surprise, sweet. MMS has never done sweet before, as far as I know.

Hannah Green, with its quirky title and its child hero, seems to take aim at the people who buy books like The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or, perhaps, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of A Window and Disappeared. I have read two of these, so I guess I'm one of those people. As writer of considerable talent, MMS adjusts his tone to suit this different genre. Our narration is a bit quirky, a bit sweet, gently bumbling and bemused. There is warmth and wit infused in the telling of the tale. Some readers compare the style to Neil Gaiman's (in Stardust or The Graveyard Book), which is a fair comparison. There are times when it gets a little too sweet, in the way that, for example, the TV show Pushing Daisies tends to overshoot the optimal level of sweetness. On the whole, however, the style is mostly just right.

There are moments, quite a few, when the narration ponders some real stuff. The way the story addresses Hannah's parents' separation, and their feelings, is written with deep insight, rich metaphors, and real heartache. There's a sense of dearly-bought wisdom in those sections, and a depth which took me by surprise. (MMS is a whip-smart writer, a virtuoso with words, but I remember the edgy-angry MMS of 1999. This older but wiser, perhaps kinder version was new to me)

However, it's not all sweetness and wisdom. MMS's version of hell is every bit as disturbing and surreal as one might expect. His devil is dangerous, even if Hannah Green is protected from seeing that side of him. There may not be any explicit sex in the text, but there's real threat and a fair amount of violence. It's certainly not a children's book, even if the main character is a child. Neither is it one of those books where the child in question is a "precocious" "prodigy" type character (which usually means a shrunken adult with some child-superpowers and weird naivetee that adults wish children had). Hannah may be described by a narration that is adult, affectionate, and a bit twee, but she's pretty normal for all that. Any sweetness is in the narration, not in her actions.

Hannah Green is an enjoyable novel. It is sweet and wise and kind, but there are teeth in there, too, and they are sharp and pointy... A real gem and a bit of a surprise.

Rating: 4.5/5

Book Review: Hekla's Children by James Brogden

Hekla's Children is a novel that taps into horror, mythology, fantasy, archeology, and the British countryside. The monster of the story is the afaugh, sort of a British Wendigo: a spirit of cannibalism and greed which possesses people and makes them do terrible things. At the start of the novel, an ancient tribe plagued by the afaugh decides to make a sacrifice to hold it at bay.

Fast forward to ten years ago, when a group of kids on a scouting exercise in a small woodland adjacent to a city suddenly disappear when their group leader leaves them on their own.

Fast forward to now, when a skeleton is found in those very same woods, and an archeologist is called in to determine if it's old or young enough to potentially be a victim of a crime that the police need to solve...

Hekla's Children is in an outstanding novel. It mixes science (archeology), myth, the uncanny, horror, and a timeless mythological realm with great skill and fluidity. The closest comparison I can think of is The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman, which has a similar atmosphere, perhaps a little more condensed and distilled and sharp, but similar enough for this novel to belong in the same space as that novella.

It's not just a novel of atmosphere: the story never gets boring, and there is real tension at pretty much every stage of the book. I don't know whether the book is a "horror" novel, but it's dark and pretty ruthless in the way it treats its characters, and there is some fundamental dread at times when they are being pursued by the monstrous...

I can't think of anything to fault the novel for. It's entertaining, atmospheric and beautifully grim. Highly recommended to those who like their fiction dark.

Rating: 4.5/5

Review: Djinn City by Saad Hossain

Djinn City is an urban fantasy novel set in Dhaka, Bankgladesh, inspired by the Eastern mythology around djinn. As backgrounds for urban fantasy novels go, Bangladesh is not one I've seen used before, and I have a weak spot for stories about djinns, so I was quite excited to read the book.

It is the story of various members of the Khan Rahman family. Indelbed is a young boy whose father Kaikobad is a drunkard and a black sheep of the family. He lives in a mansion in a poor area of the city, and Indelbed grows up neglected and hungry most of the time. One day, just as the rest of his family start to take an interest in his education (his father kept him out of school), his entire life is turned upside down. He finds his father in a coma and djinn have put a price on his head.

Rais is Indelbed's older cousin. His father is an ambassador (what he is an ambassador to is hardly clear) and his mother, Juny, is a hard nosed, clever and ambitious woman. After Indelbed disappears, Rais eventually makes it his mission to find answers and, perhaps, Indelbed.

Kaikobad, the alcoholic, meanwhile, is a discorporated soul in a strange realm, where he can only watch an ancient historical war unfold...

Djinn City starts out the way many fantasy novels start: young kid discovers that magic is real, that he is in danger from a villain, and is cut adrift from his family or orphaned to start his adventurous quest. He even soon finds a half-crazy mysterious but wise mentor.

However, the book soon diverts onto different tracks. Time passes. Indelbed's journey is not one of delight and swashbuckling fun. Meanwhile, Rais, the young adult cousin, gets to have a much more traditional adventure, half detective story and half fantasy quest. However, Rais only succeeds because his mother does half the work for him, which is not exactly the orphaned-hero way of most heroic quests.

Djinn City never got boring. There's adventure and intrigue and enough magical stuff to keep the reader entertained. Dhaka as a setting is refreshingly different, but it does not seem to be a very charismatic city: it could be any city in India or Bangladesh.

The real heart of such novels is of course the magical stuff. Saad Hossain's djinn are an entertaining bunch, livening up the pages with their chaotic ways and charisma. No complaints here. However, it does jar a bit when the author tries to explain them scientifically (it's a pretty major plot strand). This simply fails: no matter how much effort is invested in describing djinn DNA and how they manipulate reality - they simply can't both be a single naturally evolved species and have the diversity of form that they do. While most are humanoid, one, for example, is a school of fish! 

Much to my surprise, the book is pretty cavalier about the wellbeing of its characters. It might start out like a fun little YA novel, but some of the events later on get a little Game Of Thrones-y with regards to trauma inflicted, to be honest. The story never quite goes where you think it will, and don't expect everything to be nicely resolved and closed off by the end. Not, on the whole, the fun little happy read you  might expect from the premise.


Rating: 3/5

Review: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke

The Girl with the Red Balloon is a YA urban fantasy time travelling novel set in Berlin. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm sold based on that concept alone.

Ellie Baum, an American Jewish teenager, visits 21st century Berlin on a school trip, excited but slightly apprehensive as she recalls her grandfather's Holocaust-formed apprehensions about the German people. She spots a floating red balloon, and, recalling grandpa's description of beautiful days as "balloon days", asks her friend to take a photo of her as she grabs it... and, touching it, is pulled into night-time 1980s East Berlin. There, she meets a gypsy boy, a lesbian counterculture girl, and a conspiracy to smuggle persecuted people out of East Germany by means of magical balloons. Time-travel, it turns out, had not been a part of the plan.

The book is rich in atmosphere and detail - clearly, Katherine Locke has visited Berlin, and read up about history. It's also obvious that she knows a little German (but isn't at native-speaker-level), as she sprinkles German words and phrases into the book. The latter works up to a point: for any non-German-speakers, it undoubtedly adds to the richness of the details. To native speakers, her choice of words jars a bit, especially the repeated use of "Schöpfers", meaning "makers". Unfortunately, "Schöpfer" is used almost exclusively to refer to God as the creator. Similarly, her attempt at a compound noun is a bit befuddled.

When it comes to describing East Germany (and, in flashbacks to history, Jewish ghettos and concentration camps), the story feels grim and very claustrophobic. There's no way around the grimness for the scenes set in the Holocaust, but my impression is that the grimness of the DDR may well be overplayed in the novel. Germany is an odd case - because it reunited the communist, dictatorship East with the liberal democratic West, the transition was different from other countries. Because of the WW2 history, (West) Germany has a very self-conscious approach to looking at its history - so there are museums and memorials and movies about the horrors of the DDR. Other 'East European' countries also transitioned from Communist dictatorships to democracies, but didn't necessarily put the same amount of money, effort and cultural navel-gazing into looking at their past regimes. The result is perhaps a distortion of perception: Life in East Germany was no walk in the park, but it wasn't more terrible than life in any other country behind the Iron Curtain.

In terms of freedoms, living in the DDR probably wasn't worse than life today in Egypt or Cuba. In some areas of life, I suspect the likes of Egypt and Cuba today are less accommodating than the DDR had been. For example, I was a bit surprised that Mitzi, the lesbian, feared persecution, or that a pregnant woman out of wedlock would have been in terrible trouble: the DDR had a reputation for being ahead of West Germany in women's equality & sexual promiscuity / sex-positiveness. For example, the DDR 'legalised' homosexuality in 1957, 12 years before West Germany did. (In West Germany, the supreme court re-iterated in 1957 that homosexuality was obscene, and 50,000 men were arrested before it was legalised in 1975). As for racism, while it's never gone, the prejudice against Jews and gypsies that appear in the book strike me as unlikely in 1980s Germany (West or East). At times, Katherine Locke's DDR feels like it hasn't changed much from Nazi Germany, and that is, in my opinion, an exaggeration,

That said, Ellie being an English-speaker behind the Iron Curtain, she has to spend much of her time in hiding, forcing a claustrophobic tension into the story that feels warranted and authentic. Perhaps East Germany feels extra grim partially because of the culture shock and contrast she experiences.

While much of this review details the aspects of the novel that made me bristle a little, I would nonetheless recommend it. It's a good, exciting story, with shedloads of atmosphere and enough authenticity for most readers. If you were alive during the Cold War, or if you're a German native, you might find some things to quibble over, but if neither of those statements applies I suspect you'll enjoy the setting, atmosphere, detail and tension of the book.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Chasing Embers by James Bennett

Chasing Embers has a lot going for it. A beautiful cover, promising blurbs, comparisons with Ben Aaronovitch (admittedly, that particular comparison comes from the publisher's marketing team, not the blurb), and friggin dragons. (Dragons, for me, are a selling point, not a hinderance to enjoyment).

Reading the novel about Ben, a dragon spending his life hiding in human form as part of a contract between all magical creatures and mankind, the story had even more things that were massive assets. My favourite pharaoh, Hatchepsut, is important to the plot. The story takes place in New York, London, Berlin and Cairo (of which New York is the only city I haven't visited or lived in). There's (genuine) myths and lore appearing. Basically, this novel sits square in the centre of a Venn Diagram of things I love in books. Urban fantasy? Check. Myths? Check. Places I know? Check. Ancient Egypt? Check. Friggin' dragons? Check and double check.

And yet, it took me ages to finish the novel. I slugged through it, fighting an uphill battle all the way. The reason? The prose. Sorry, James Bennett, but your particular style is not pleasing to my ears / eyes / whichever organ I read with. It's not dense and complex in the way of China Mieville. It's just so, so, so full of unnecessary descriptions, metaphors, and writery stuff. Not music-to-my-ears bedtime story prose like Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Not musical rhythmic prose like Pat Rothfuss's. Not take-your-brain-on-a-psychedelic-ride prose like Ian McDonald. It's prose that draws attention to itself without having whatever pizzazz makes prose shine and sparkle and somehow transcend purpleness into greatness. At least, as far as my personal taste is concerned. And I have to honestly admit: there is subjectivity and taste involved. All I can say is that, despite subject matter, plot, and backgrounds, I kept contemplating giving up, all the way until the final battle.

I was also a bit frustrated with our hero, Ben. He gets injured a lot. Think Harry Dresden, then add self-healing capabilities, and amp up the going-through-the-wringer factor to 11. At one point, he has been eviscerated (literally) and crushed like a fly (literally) and still he reassembled himself. He spends a lot of time unconscious (conveniently having flashbacky dreams). And in the final battle, I found myself flabbergasted that Ben didn't seem to make much of a difference. Almost the entire climax plays out while Ben is a mere spectator. By the end of the book, I didn't want to read any more about Ben: I wanted a novel about his ex-girlfriend Rose instead.

I really wanted to like Chasing Embers, but it had the reek of rookie errors / a beginner writer about it. It's a novel that I can imagine being fantastic, if a ruthless editor had massaged (and occasionally bludgeoned) it into shape. In that, it reminds me of Mike Shevdon novels, which are also one ruthless editor away from greatness. In the end, I doubt I'll read any more of the novels in this series - despite the obvious research and love of subject matter that has gone into it. If your taste in prose is different, you will find much to enjoy.

Rating: 2.5/5

PS: Minor criticism: Hatchepsut's mummy has never been verifiably identified. AFAIK it does not lie in the museum in Cairo.

Book Review: The Elusive Elixir by Gigi Pandian

The Elusive Elixir is the third novel in the 'Accidental Alchemist' series. This sort-of-urban fantasy set in Portland, Oregon, is a pleasant romp. Using alchemy as the driver of its supernatural aspects is a different approach - even if, ultimately, it is used quite similarly to magic.

Zoe Faust is the 'accidental' alchemist the series is named after. Having discovered the philosopher's stone, she does not age, and has lived for several hundred years as a young woman. (All alchemists can discover the secret to eternal life, except it is a different one for each and its method cannot be transferred to any other)

In the first book, a living gargoyle, Dorian Robert-Houdin, turned up at her (newly acquired) door and turned her life upside down. Since then, she's discovered that a sinister group of alchemists have been using 'backwards alchemy' and a 'death rotation' to take alchemical shortcuts, which is Evil. Dorian, however, owes his life to it, and as backwards alchemy has started to crumble around the world, so Dorian, too, is rapidly losing life force.

The Elusive Elixir is therefore a book about Zoe's continuing quest to save her friend. The first two books were primarily (murder) mystery novels. The Elusive Elixir, too, is bound to please fans of Jessica Fletcher / Murder, She Wrote, but the urgency of Dorian's deterioration is more in the foreground than before.

The Accidental Alchemist series is pleasantly entertaining fun. Murder, mystery, magic (well, alchemy) and an incorrigible living gargoyle and an equally incorrigible teenager provide plenty of diversion. Meanwhile, as Dorian is a chef by training and Zoe is a vegan, the series is unique in its focus on vegan food, which features heavily. The foody descriptions throughout are plentiful, and each volume includes a bunch of vegan recipes at the end.

The one thing that Gigi Pandian has not quite mastered yet (in my opinion) is the art of exposition. There's quite a lot of it in each novel, mostly delivered by Zoe reminiscing. If you have not read the first book in the series, rest assured, all its plot points are delivered in each subsequent volume by means of slightly clunky exposition To make matters worse, there is an awful lot of repetition. If I didn't know any better, I would think Gigi Pandian is a fairly elderly writer, as it does have a bit of a nattering habit of self-repetition. (She's not elderly, at least not according to the 'About the Author' text in the back). Perhaps the Accidental Alchemist series is aimed at an older reader demographic (like the Brenda & Effie Mysteries series) - for me, it was a bit annoying.

If you like light entertainment murder mysteries, (urban) fantasy and a dash of vegan cuisine, and if you can forgive a little clunky repetition, you'll enjoy this book (and its predecessors) very much.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Ferryman Institute by Colin Gigl

The Ferryman Institute is a fantasy novel with a premise that's more unique than most. Our hero, Charlie, is a ferryman, someone whose purpose is to accompany the souls of the recently departed and safely transfer them to their afterlife.

With its striking and evocative cover and its original premise, I was immediately sold on the book. Honestly, I could fawn over the beauty of the cover for a while - I adore it. That said, Colin Gigl imagines the Ferryman Institute as an office-based, public service type organisation. There are sadly no rivers to row across, no souls in the Styx...

Charlie's job, in fact, is to be there when a person dies, and when the spirit appears, to convince the spirit to walk through a door towards the light (their afterlife), rather than staying behind on Earth and becoming a ghost, doomed to fade from existence. His job is made hard by the mental state of the spirits just after death: depending on their demise, they can be distressed, confused, terrified, irrational...

We soon learn that Charlie is the best among Ferrymen: he has never failed to convince a spirit to walk through the door. He's the only Ferryman with such a perfect record, and he's been doing his job for a long while. But all is not well with Charlie: his work is eating away at him, grinding down his own soul. Unfortunately for him, he's immortal (and unable to sense pain), so it seems like he's stuck. Until, that is, a special assignment offers him a choice...

The novel is the story of what happens after Charlie makes that choice. It's in large parts a chase thriller, accompanied by wise cracking dialogue and sarcasm. The story moves at a cheerful pace and never fails to entertain.

On the other hand, if you're looking for something more than light entertainment, The Ferryman Institute is probably not for you. The humour is pleasantly diverting, but not cutting or particularly memorable. The story seems a little less original than I'd hoped for (it has quite a lot in common with Chris Holm's Dead Harvest, while the Ferrymen seem surprisingly similar to Dead Like Me - style grim reapers). Characters can occasionally seem a little contradictory (Charlie can go to and fro between being super-competent and completely gormless. Alice's ability to be humorous and sarcastic seems somewhat at odds with her debilitating depression). The plot can feel a little predictable. And the book does this post-post-postmodern thing of referencing pop culture a lot. One character even chose his own name from pop culture references. It feels a little like cheating - as if the author is either overly self-conscious of characters being too similar to others that went before, or as if the author is trying to use a shorthand way of telling the reader what to think and expect of a character / situation.

Basically, The Ferryman Institute is a good first novel. Solidly entertaining, fast paced and fun. A promising start, though not quite as memorable and original as I'd hoped.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Conclave of Shadow by Alyc Helms

The Conclave of Shadows is the second book in Alyc Helms' Missy Masters series. You should definitely pick up & read the first book before you buy this one.

Picking up where the superbly fun, ultra-twisty The Dragons of Heaven left off, Missy tries to re-establish normality in her day-to-day life in San Francisco. Her alter ego, Mr Mystic, has been hiding from the press attention and the clutches of Argent, the western world's premier (capitalist, corporate) superhero organisation.

It is not to be. Her acquaintance Abby, who is an Argent hero, looks her up and drags her back into the spotlight. Meanwhile. San Francisco has been experiencing a series of increasingly powerful minor earthquakes, the supernatural protections that Lung Di had put in place to separate the worldly realm from others are crumbling, and her friends and family are all juggling competing interests and problems...

Conclave of Shadows affirms that Dragons of Heaven was not a fluke (not that anyone would ever think so). Alyc Helms really can write, and write very well indeed. Infused with wit and humour, filled with a fundamentally open and kindhearted warmth, this is the contemporary speculative fiction at its stylistic best. Contemporary, in that it features multicultural characters of various sexual orientations, women characters who are central to the story, and adversity which is not powered by pure villainy, but by conflicts of interest between complex individuals and entities that each try to be as good as they can, within their own moralities...

Is it just me, or is there a trend for (women) writers to write books that are a bit more huggy in recent times? I'm thinking Karen Lord, Becky Chambers, and now Alyc Helms. The Missy Masters series differs from Long Road to a Small Angry Planet and Best of All Possible Worlds in one key aspect: it mixes the huggy warmhearted approach to its characters and events with a big dollop of action adventuring. It's what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be, if it had just a little bit less testosterone...

This is not to say that Conclave of Shadows is perfect. The second half of the novel is a bit repetitive - it feels like a character in a video game having to pass level after level, battling a boss at the end of each stage. And, after all the twists of Dragons of Heaven, the number of major plot revelations in Conclave feels oddly subdued. The biggest obstacle to my own enjoyment of the book is that there are too many characters. I kept forgetting who's who, especially among the male side characters. Then again, that is a particular problem of mine: I keep forgetting who's who in the organisation I work for: I have a rubbish people memory.

That said, the series is definitely on my must-buy, must-preorder list from now on. Urban fantasy at its very best. It's on a par with Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, Daniel O'Malley's Checquy series, Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library and slightly superior to Chris Holm's Collector series. Thrilling, funny and fun. Go get it now!

Rating: 4/5

The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms

The Dragons of Heaven is a debut novel, set in a world where superheroes and some kinds of magic are real. It's also a world in which not everyone believes in magic - sceptics believe the superheroes just have very advanced tech (which some do) and very good PR (ditto). There are laws about 'citizen vigilantes' and some form together into SHIELD-like organisations, some commercial, some state-run. But all of that is merely backdrop: the novel is much more interested in its Chinese-influenced mythology and magic and a hero's journey.

Our hero is Mr Mystic, one of those superpowered vigilantes. Able to control shadows and even drift from the 'real' world into a shadow realm, Mr Mystic is a fedora wearing, arch-British-sounding, Chinese-magic-wielding martial arts expert. Oh, and she's also a woman, Missy Masters, who inherited the superpowers from her grandfather, the original Mr Mystic, whom she impersonates. (Said grandfather, meanwhile, has disappeared without a trace or a goodbye).

Superheroes tend to be the stuff of movies and comic books, but The Dragons of Heaven is a funny, slick, energetic romp, filled with action and jaw dropping (but believable) plot twists.

I will admit that it took me a while to get properly absorbed by the story: the timeline is a little wobbly at the start of the novel, with two parallel storylines (one in the now, one in the past) and flashbacks galore. Also, I am not good with (character) names at the best of times, so I tended to get confused between all the Asian characters. Worst of all, I read the book while stressed / struggling with concentration, so even though I noticed the humour and the playfulness, I really struggled to focus on anything. (This has to do with life issues rather than any issues of the book, but it makes me feel I missed out on enjoying this book properly).

Eventually, even though the stress factors in the real world were still there, the book hooked me, and by the end I was not just invested in Missy, but her world and all the characters within it. In fact, The Dragons of Heaven is a novel where there is no such thing as a pure villain - all characters, even the antagonists, have reason and richness and perspectives that are perfectly understandable.

Basically, if you want a book that is fun, funny, action-packed, thrilling, a bit romantic and sexy, joyful, whip-smart, and a good romp, The Dragons of Heaven really should be up your street.

Rating: 5/5

Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley

Stiletto is the eagerly awaited sequel to The Rook, which introduced readers to the fun world of The Checquy, the UK's magical spy agency. The Rook could be summed up as Hogwarts meets James Bond via Terry Pratchett: it's full of suspense, humour and magic. A masterpiece of fun. So, naturally, I've been very, very keen to get my mitts on the sequel.

The first thing that struck me about Stiletto is the shift in perspective. Myfanwy Thomas, the heroine of the first novel, still appears in the story, but she is no longer the focus. Instead, our main protagonists are Felicity (a combat Pawn of the Checquy) and Odette Leliefield, a Grafter.

The Grafters are the Checquy's oldest enemies: where the Checquy are supernaturally gifted and born special, the Grafters come from a clan of elite scientists who developed near-miraculous surgical and medical techniques, which enable them to modify their bodies in line with their personal preferences. They can be super-soldiers, or they can fill themselves with handy and useful tools and features, ranging from immunities and super-senses all the way to utility skin pockets that also keep their contents sterile.

Compared to the first novel, Stiletto did not have quite as strong a hook. In The Rook, your attention is grabbed from the first page, with a strong mystery at the heart of the plot. Stiletto takes a different approach: there are thrills and mysteries, but this is a story about characters on the periphery of negotiations between two former enemy organisations who seek to form an alliance. Stiletto takes a little longer to find its feet. The story switches between viewpoints, and sometimes it feels like the reader is getting perhaps a bit more detail and background than was strictly necessary.

That said, Stiletto is laugh-out-loud funny and hilarious. The humour ranges from dry wit to potty humour - it should work well for a British audience. Stiletto also succeeds at feeling more true to its setting: The Rook didn't quite feel like a novel set in the UK. Stiletto, on the other hand, feels much more convincing about the UK, Belgium, Europe... there are some rare slip-ups (for example, I think the term "Eurotrash" is more common in America than in the UK or anywhere in Europe), but on the whole, Stiletto is a book that's easy to like, set in a world that is easy to feel at home in, and delivered with an easy-going, tongue in cheek style.

If you've read The Rook, you will undoubtedly enjoy Stiletto too. If you haven't, then I would recommend reading The Rook first. It isn't required reading to understand Stiletto, but it's huge fun, and a slightly superior novel.

Rating: 4/5

The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney

The Wolf in the Attic is a novel about Anna, a refugee girl living in 1920s Oxford with her father. She only dimly remembers her life before the catastrophe that brought her to England, and, home-schooled by a governess, she does not have much contact with other children. Looking for an adventure, she sneaks out into the fields and forests around Oxford in the middle of the night, only to come face to face with something scarier than she'd ever expected, and people who seem to live more mythical, ruthless and dangerous lives.

The blurbs in some places mention CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, who live in the same Oxford as Anna. Indeed, they make cameo appearances in the book. However, this isn't their story. Their appearances add very little to the plot. To be honest, I think it might have been wiser to cut them out entirely: mentioning Narnia or Tolkien will nudge reader expectations into certain directions. The Wolf in the Attic, however, is too different in its perspective.

Anna's encounters take place in our world. The strangers she meets may live differently, but they wander through the same landscapes and the same Britain that we live in. Don't think Narnia. Think Pan's Labyrinth, Alan Garner or some of the more restrained urban fantasy you might have read / watched. Meanwhile, Anna's adventures don't feel safe the way Narnia ones do, nor epic in the same way that Middleearth ones are.

Paul Kearney is a fascinating writer, tackling the intersection of the otherworldly with our own world with care and a lot of thought. He's written several novels for adults which handle such stories with more complexity than most: A Different Kingdom and Riding the Unicorn. The Wolf in the Attic is a novel for Young Adults, but it, too, thinks about the grittier aspects of its type of story. In his adult novels, the protagonists are a wife-beating prison guard and a man whose youthful adventures in another world leave him broken. In the Wolf in the Attic, our heroine is a not-entirely-welcome refugee girl with a difficult father, going through puberty (in all its sticky, inglorious detail). Make no mistake: this is no flimsy light entertainment. This is literary literature.

There's a lot to appreciate about this book: having a refugee as heroine is certainly timely - and a reminder that refugees come from all kinds of backgrounds and places. Anna's family are Greeks from Smyrna, which was burnt down and subjected to massacres and is now called Izmir: I had never even heard of Smyrna, so the book made me look things up and educated me about an aspect of history I'd been entirely ignorant of. As for the fantastical elements, they are evocative and primal, as they should be.

That said, at times I struggled to keep reading. It throws a few too many ideas into one story. Once you mix up several different archetypal strands, you lose the beautiful clarity that a single strand can add to a tale. This is the trap that The Wolf in the Attic falls into - too many myths and ideas produce a confusing brew of a novel. The cameos of legendary Oxfordian authors is one example of an ingredient that didn't quite fit. There are others, but they would be spoilers.

To be honest, I'd recommend Paul Kearney's earlier novels: their themes are more coherent and, though serious, they never dragged. The Wolf in the Attic is not a bad novel. It's clever and interesting and has a lot to recommend it. Sadly, the mix of ingredients is not quite right.

Rating: 3/5

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

The Severed Streets is the second book in a new series which began with London Falling. You could describe this series as a darker, grittier sibling to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant novels: Paul Cornell's London is also full of magic, but bereft of humour and warmth.

Our four police officers who have been blessed / cursed with The Sight, which lets them perceive the supernatural, have just about recovered from the traumatic events of the previous novel. They work from their little portakabin and wait for a new case to arise which requires their expertise. Lo and behold, a LibDem MP gets brutally eviscerated in his locked limousine. There's no weapon in the car, the driver insists he didn't do it, and CCTV shows no one getting in or out...

Paul Cornell makes some interesting choices in the writing of this novel. For one, he instantly dates it by setting it during the Con-Dem-Nation coalition government. He creates thinly veiled replicas of real people and events: a media baron who is a thinly disguised Viscount Rothermere (called Russel Vincent in the novel), protests based on the London Riots but set in post-Olympic-Games-London, masks based on the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks made popular by Anonymous, but consistently and irritatingly described as 'Toff masks'... but then real people also appear in his book. Frankie Boyle makes a cameo. Neil Gaiman makes an appearance that seemingly starts out as cameo and then develops into a full blown story arc. I thought it's more common for age-defining authors to get fictionalised posthumously (Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen etc.), so the appearance of Neil Gaiman was a bit of a surprise, and when he got involved in the plot, well, let's just say Paul Cornell had better be a good friend of Neil Gaiman...

There is something mischievous and a little transgressive about this aspect of the book, but also just a tiny bit frustrating. Paul Cornell's Neil Gaiman talks about similar sorts of things as the real one (stories, Neverwhere, bees), but he does not quite sound like real Neil, or perhaps the opposite - perhaps he sounded a bit too matter-of-fact and authentic, and I sort of expected something a little grander.

OK, Neil Gaiman out of the way, the Severed Streets is a grim dark, horror-filled urban fantasy. The Smiling Man continues to be behind things, and the attacker eviscerates quite a few people using the riots for cover (wearing a protester's mask, rising from crowds & flying off, invisible to those without The Sight), while two of our police officers are obsessed with their own problems - getting a father out of hell, and trying to avoid going to hell, respectively. There are some betrayals, some schemes, a lot of individual actions - basically, if our team finally learnt to work as a team in book one, they are now again working quite independently and with serious obstacles to fully trusting and sharing information with each other. They keep running off without telling any of the others what they're up to.

The book may spill more blood than the first, but is a less gruelling read: this time, no children get boiled alive, and while there's plenty castrations, the horror is less emotional than it was in London Falling. There's a lot of work in creating something uncanny, but it feels a little uncanny-by-the-numbers. If it's ever turned into a movie, I think Terry Gilliam should direct it.

The Severed Streets is an engrossing read, relentlessly grim, with a few emotional gut-punches, but none that equal those surprises that made the first book so harrowing towards its finale. The series is definitely worth a look for people who like urban fantasy, but not perhaps the series of choice if you're in the mood for something cheery and light. While The Severed Streets does explain and sum up some of the key events from the first book, I doubt it works very well as a standalone - start with London Falling if you have not read that yet.

Rating: 3.5/5

London Falling by Paul Cornell

London Falling is an urban fantasy novel set in the most fantastical city in the world - London. There is really no other city as suitable and rich for urban fantasy as London.

London Falling is also a police story, with a small squad of police at its heart. Our protagonists are two undercover agents, their supervisor and a backroom techie. The novel starts as a multi-month operation is about to come to its end, on New Year's Eve. The mob boss they've been trailing is frantically taking his crew around different houses, while the higher ups in the police have scrapped their operation's budget, so they need to make their arrest that night, irrespective of whether they have enough evidence to make prosecution viable or not. The pressure is on.

There are tensions in the team - or rather, they are really not a team at all yet. Instead, they are four people who work on the same project, but rarely together and each laden with resentments towards some or all of the others.

The mob boss, meanwhile, is coming to the end of a ten year reign of unimpeachable crimes, having taken over every other gang in his territory without ever getting into a bloody war. He's used his private room to do so, and there is an air of secrecy around his working methods. No one, not his closest allies, have any idea how he did what he did.

As it's an urban fantasy, you might guess that the supernatural is involved. Things very quickly spiral out of hand, and our crew of coppers spend the rest of the book trying to adjust to a new perspective on the world, trying to become a well-functioning team, but, most of all, trying to catch and eliminate a major baddie.

London Falling differs from Ben Aaronovitch's magical London police procedural in tone (it does not go for 'funny') and in approach (there is no wise magical mentor, just four police officers trying to learn as they go). It's very much a thriller, with heavy doses of peril, gruesome crimes, and gut-wrenching plot developments that damn near made me tear up at one point.

It does take a while to find its feet, and some of the personal histories / demons of the characters felt a smidgen by-the-numbers. The supernatural London also differed from that in other books in being almost entirely sinister - a thing to be feared. While this worked well in terms of creating an atmosphere or peril, it deprived this London of complexity. To draw comparisons: Hellboy 2 is a much superior movie to Hellboy for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that in the sequel, a very richly drawn supernatural coexists with the mundane, and we get glimpses of an otherworld that is not just full of monsters, but filled with the magical everyday, with non-human characters living independent lives, especially in the Faerie Market. It is that sort of perspective which is missing in London Falling (as it was also largely missing in the first Hellboy movie).

London Falling is a good, entertaining, thrilling read. It's a lot darker than other recent offerings of urban fantasy, with heavy elements of horror. I have high hopes for the series as it develops, but this is definitely a satisfying start.

Rating: 4/5

Dream Paris by Tony Ballantyne

Dream Paris is the second in a series of books, following on from Dream London. The book ditches most of the characters from Dream London, with only two (that I noticed) reappearing.

Dream Paris is the story of Anna, a teenage girl living in the slowly redeveloping ruins of London, which has only just re-established its reality after a takeover attempt by the Dream World.

Her parents are absent, having marched into the parks at the end of Dream London, while Anna only  narrowly escaped from the march. She's coming to terms with life on her own, looking after lost and vulnerable neighbours from time to time, and vaguely looking forward to passing her A-levels and moving on to university.

Dream London has not passed without leaving some aftereffects behind. People take an undue interest in the social lives and virtue of women. Social mores have reverted by a generation or two (in Dream London, women were either housewives, whores, or, much more rarely, femme fatales), so Anna is not entirely surprised when a social worker shows up at her door, tasked with taking her into care.

The meeting with the social worker does not go as expected: another person shows up, a representative of the government with a clear history with the Dreamworld, and he has plans for Anna. She is given a fortune, a relic from Dream London. Fortunes are absolutely deterministic: what is foretold must happen. Unfortunately, the fortunes are in short snippets and impressions: an argument with her mother, a night of passion, a death...

Anna's fortune foretells that she will meet her mother in Dream Paris. The British government has an interest in revisiting the Dream World, as the incursion into London has left Britain reeling. They send Anna on her quest, accompanied by a soldier / bodyguard.

Dream London, if you haven't read it, is a mesmerising, evocative novel. Surrealism and dream logic intermingle effortlessly with an adventure story. It's a novel that reminds the reader of Dark City, of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It's very archetypal, with patriarchical gender roles and a strong sense of location / London.

Dream Paris, by comparison, is different. This time, too, there is surreal dream logic at work. The plot successfully balances the unpredictable nature of crazy dreams with the predictable shape of a regular story. Having a good structure with plenty of thrills makes it satisfying to read.

Once again, there is also a strong sense of location. Paris is a different city, with different archetypes. Dream Paris is caught up in perpetual revolution. Eiffel Towers spring up everywhere and need to be repressed, while La Terreur and Madame Guillotine lurk just around the corner.

Dream Paris stands up to reading on its own. It is a slightly superior novel to its precursor: Dream London made the reader feel like being sucked further and further into a dream. It was a sinkhole of surrealism, a huge credit to writerly craftsmanship, but, towards the end, it was so surreal that the reading experience stopped being pleasurable and started feeling more than a little nightmarish. Dream Paris, on the other hand, is set in an established Dream City. It is not trying to take over real Paris. There is less of a sense of spiralling, exponentially growing surrealism, as this city is more or less set in its ways. People are still shaped by the Dreamworld, but citizens here have lived their entire lives in Dreamworld: they are not brutalised by a shifting reality. Dream London turned women into whores, ethnic minorities into primitives. It did this, fairly rappidly, to people who were modern Londoners to begin with. Dream Paris may be full of iconic characters, but they have grown into their roles over their lifetimes. They have more agency, are less the victims of a traumatic invasion of their psyches.

Dream Paris is full of interesting, quirky ideas. Scary clowns, porcelain dolls, sinister banks, edible duels, integer bombs, non-continuous mathematics, sexism and morality... it's a novel that positively fizzes with originality.

If you enjoyed Dream London, I think you'll love Dream Paris. If you found Dream London interesting, but not quite to your liking, you will probably enjoy Dream Paris more, And if you haven't read Dream London, I would recommend it, and recommend Dream Paris more.

Rating: 4.5/5