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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Gilded Cage by Vic James – Excellent Fantasy Set in Alternate England

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Gilded Cage by Vic James will be released on Valentine’s Day, 2017.  This is an excellent novel with a rich backstory and detailed world building, interesting characters and plenty of plot.  Don’t go by the blurb for this novel which make it sound like YA fantasy with teen romance and devoid of original ideas.  It has plenty of themes that adults will enjoy:

  • Slavery.  No, not based on race but on sheer power and ability to dominate.
  • Revolution
  • Peace and prosperity based on a grotesque social compact
  • Power

Gilded Cage postulates an England where Charles I died when overthrown by Skill users, men and women from certain families who have immense mental abilities.  The Skilled can heal themselves, raises entire buildings, adjust the minds of others and kill.  The Skilled didn’t only kill Charles, they abrogated all political power to themselves and now call themselves Equals.

Unskilled people, commoners, live ordinary lives, marrying, having children, raising families, going to school, working, saving, enjoying life, retiring.  Except that everyone – truly everyone outside the 300 or so Skilled families – must spend 10 years as a slave.  The slaves have zero rights, are legally not people.  Some serve the Skilled as unpaid servants while most live and work in slave towns.  Food, shelter, clothing are minimal and work is long and brutal, 12 hours 6 days a week.  Slavery is nothing like our community service and no one comes out the same as they went in.

Backstory – Slavery

James built a detailed and richly thought-out world.   Consider her treatment of slavery, a repulsive idea in any context however configured.

The slavery concept as executed in the novel is unique.  The Equals could  have forced everyone to work 1 week a month for 41 years, which would be about the same total as 10 years all at once.  But if you think about it, a 1 week per month routine would quickly become just a duty, onerous, unpleasant, but not soul-shattering.  To make their power and position absolutely, unequivocally clear, Equals force the 10 years.

When do you do your 10 year slave days?  Young so you have the rest of your life free (if you aren’t killed or maimed)?  At 55 so you can enjoy 35 years of adulthood first?   Alone or with a spouse?  With your children? It’s a horrible choice and there is no good answer.

The Equals also were smart to leave commoners alone to live normally outside the 10 year slave days.  They could have made everyone permanent slaves but that would have been unwise for economic and security reasons.  The commoners are the prime market for the goods that slave towns produce, and the guards and managers are all free people.

I wondered too about the guards, especially the sadistic bullies.  You would think that word would get around and they would be paid back when they too eventually had to serve their days, even if they went to a different slave town.

Anytime an author establishes a framework so carefully structured that readers think about the economic and political (to say nothing about moral) ramifications we have the makings of a great fantasy.  Once the author sets up the structure then she must create characters and a story that are equally vibrant.  James has done that here.

Characters

James does an excellent job showing us the characters, especially Skilled brothers Gavar and Silyen, one expected to pursue political leadership and the other scheming and exploring his Skill, Gavar’s repulsive fiancee Buoda, commoner Luke and would-be revolutionary leader Dr. Jackson.

She uses small details to show us the people.  For example, Bouda wants to force anyone who is unemployed long term back into slavery and can’t understand why her perfectly logical idea was not adopted.  That tells us about Bouda.  We see people interacting, many interesting minor players and some take risks and some do not.

Gilded Cage stands alone as an excellent, thought-provoking novel but it is also set up for sequels.  It is character-driven with several minor characters positioned for larger roles in the next books as conflicts are primed to start.  I expect we will see more of Luke’s older sister Abi as she escapes at the novel’s end, heartsick at Luke’s fate and from leaving Gavar and Silyen’s UnSkilled (but still noble) brother.  We will see more of Daisy, Abi and Luke’s young sister and her charge, Libby, Gavar’s illegitimate baby daughter who may provoke Bouda to ill-advised cruelty.

I Want to Know More – Skill and Equals

It’s clear that some Skilled can steal Skill from others, some do so unknowingly, and that some are overly fond of humiliating and hurting others.   Gavar’s father mentions he enjoyed his time using “special techniques”, i.e., using Skill to force commoners’ minds or torture.  He expects Gavar to do the same and seems to have almost no normal familial feelings beyond pride.

The man who founded Gavar’s family is the one who killed Charles I in an agonizing, extended execution.  That man’s son established the Equal leadership and set the Skilled as the only ones who lead and govern.  These people are repulsive, but there are hints that some may be rethinking their role.

Silyen wants to learn everything he can and he has more than his share of power, possibly stolen from his UnSkilled brother.  And what about Libby?  Does she have Skill?  Can she play a role to reconcile the commoners and Equal?

Overall

Vic James has given us a fascinating novel with a genuine plot, world and characters.  She balanced writing a solid story with setting up sequels and I hope to follow her through her next novels.

5 Stars

I received an advance copy from NetGalley in expectation of a review.

Dragons, Mummies, Remnants from Merrie England – Chasing Embers by James Bennet

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If anyone asks you the riddle, “What do Merrie Olde England, Celtic stories, the Queen of Punt, evil mummified priests, Queen Hatshepsut and drought in Ethiopia have in common?” you now know the answer.  Chasing Embers by James Bennet combines all of these into an interesting story.  Hero Ben Garston is a Remnant, the single member of his magical race allowed to live awake in our world by virtue of the ancient Lore, the agreement brokered by King John of England between men and magical beings in 1215.

Ben is a dragon, and if another dragon awakens then the Lore will break and humans and the magicals will once more be at war.  So how do Hatshepsut, mummies and Punt get in the middle of this?  Simple. Hatshepsut’s evil undead priest Baba Kamenwati wants to entice Anubis to the world and uses Ben’s girlfriend Rose as bait.  A young girl hoping for a miracle to end the hideous drought that is killing everyone wakes up Atiya, Queen of Punt, a demigoddess of sorts, who can take on dragon form.   Clear yes?

Chasing Embers is easier to follow than it sounds but it took me several pages to get into the story.

Characters

Chasing Embers is not a character-centric novel, in fact Bennet builds only enough character to prop up the story. Characterization is weak and people seem to do things just to do them.

Despite spending nearly the entire novel with Ben we don’t know him well.  He is idealistic, cynical, acts to protect his girlfriend Rose, curious, resourceful but felt like a character and not a person.  Ben is a dragon who can shapeshift to human, and as a human youth he fell in love and agreed to stop hunting people to please his beloved.  He has loved other human women and loves and wants to protect Rose, but she senses there is something off about Ben and rejects him.

Ben isn’t a happy person and he’s lonely and feels sorry for himself.  He isn’t happy with his life and does nothing to change it.

The most interesting character is Blaise Van Hart, the Fae envoy, a remnant himself in a way, left behind when the other Fae withdrew after King Arthur died at Camlann.  He plays a major role that gives the story a backbone.  We don’t know him well either, which makes sense since he cultivates mystery.

Villains read like comic book characters, seeming to enjoy villainy for evil’s sake.  Undead priest Baba Kamenwati wants Anubis God of Death to rule the world, not a wise desire.  The Coven Royal is three nasty witches, happy to hurt anyone but it’s not clear what they want to obtain beyond making trouble.  Minor villain Fulk Fitzwarren wants to reclaim the title, house and lands that his ancestor lost back in 1215.  I don’t think he would be all that happy owning a ruined castle but his family has schemed and fought Ben Garsten for the last 800 years to reclaim it, so why not.

Setting

The best parts of the book are in Egypt and Punt/Ethiopia.  Bennet helps us feel the hopeless drought, the hot dry air, the sand that gets into everything, the spectacle of Hatshepsut’s entourage, the sun baking Punt and the people who eack out their living in ancient Egyptian tombs today.

Writing Style

Bennet manages to juggle all the pieces and keep his complex plot up in the air.  While he isn’t a gifted storyteller he writes clearly enough that this complicated story with jogs back in time to 1215 AD and 1470 BC makes sense and we can keep the various characters clear.  Chasing Embers is Bennet’s first published novel and writing is fairly decent considering that.

The first part of the story is boring and doesn’t make a lot of sense as we hop from modern New York to modern Ethiopia.  When Chasing Embers finally got interesting and I was compelled to keep reading, my tablet said I was 18% through the novel.  If you are like me, 18% is a long way to go before a story coalesces and starts to move forward.

Overall

Chasing Embers is fantasy with an unusual, interesting premise (the Lore and Remnants), a vivid glimpse of ancient Punt and the meeting of two queens.  Ben is a dragon but this is not just another dragon story as it combines history and myths from multiple eras and peoples.  The weak characters are offset by the setting and Bennet’s imaginative use of Egypt ancient and modern, Ethiopia and Punt.

I enjoyed reading Chasing Embers – once past the magic 18% point it was no hardship to finish unlike many fantasies – but didn’t like the novel enough to look for the sequel, if one is written.  Overall 3+ stars.

NetGalley gave me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Beware Malls Overrun with Demons! Long Hot Summoning by Tanya Huff

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Long Hot Summoning: The Keeper’s Chronicles #3 is the third book in Tanya Huff’s fun Keepers series set in Ontario, Canada.  The back story is that a few people, called Keepers, patrol the world and keep it safe from otherworld, aka demon incursions.  Claire with her cat Austin saved the world in the first book and now younger sister Diana has graduated from high school and ready to take on the Keeper role with her cat Sam.

The Long Hot Summoning has much of the fun that Summon the Keeper had and second book in the series, The Second Summoning, just misses.  Diana answers the summons to a mall in Kingston where the evil powers are trying to overlay their hellish mall onto the real one.  Unfortunately they are very close and sister Claire is a bit distracted trying to save Dean and his hotel guests from a mummy who is sucking their lives to power her own.  Diana gets help from mall elves, a magic mirror and a pink plastic magic wand.

The plot is fun, with multiple subplots that do not distract from the main story.  Can Diana save the mall kids, Arthur (yes, that Arthur), Claire, the cats and herself?  Can she shut down the hellish segue into our world?  Will Osiris weigh Claire’s heart and find it heavier than the feather and doom her?  Will Lance shut down mummy Meryat?  Can she save the magic mirror Jack?

Claire’s, Lance’s and Austin’s characters are well done, although Diana’s and the minor ones are a bit fla, although even the less well-developed people are funny and you can imagine meeting them.  Diana grows up a bit, begins to accept The Rules, although she still wants to bend them every which way.  Of course any book where the cats are intelligent (as we know they are) and play major roles in saving the Earth has got to be good!

Overall I recommend The Long Hot Summoning and the first book, Summon the Keeper if you enjoy fantasy with a bit of a bite and strong characters, humor and good writing.  This is a fast read, perfect for a late evening or take it to the porch this summer and enjoy!

4 Stars for The Long Hot Summoning and Summon the Keeper gets 5 stars.

Refreshingly Different – The Unhappy Medium – Contemporary Fantasy by T. J. Brown

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The Unhappy Medium was a happy surprise!  While the blurb made it clear that it isn’t a typical ghost/medium/seance/haunting book, I was delighted  just how different The Unhappy Medium is. I was engaged from the get-go with the character and the setting and plot but if you don’t care for books about science in the back story this novel may not be for you.

Set in today’s England it features brilliant physicist Dr Newton Barlow as he blazes a stellar career researching nuclear fusion and a side media line debunking the supernatural.  Sadly he is less wise than smart.

Cold Fusion Anyone?

Newton first accepts post doc money from a R&D company then accepts their job offer to explore the tantalizing hints he sees of nuclear fusion from collapsing bubbles.  He’s unhappy that his employers restrict him from publishing or talking to others, but very glad of the income and research support.  At least he’s happy until the 2008 crash when the company’s investors start asking for solid results – NOW.  Newton tries to soft pedal his findings but the more he explains the more the media pushes:  Just when will we get cheap power from bubble fusion?  Next decade?  Sooner?

Poor Newton has no leg to stand on and he’s alienated so many that he has no allies.  Soon he has no job.  Then he has no wife (which is no loss whatsoever), no daughter, no house.  All he has is a tiny income, an old Citroen car and booze.

I liked this part of the story.  We got to know Newton and the box he managed to fall into.  Plus the research process is fascinating and author T. J. Brown did a great job showing us how commercial realities and science sometimes run together – and sometimes clash.

The Medium

Newton even manages to get fired from a popular (aka crank) science magazine because he’s too depressed and too upright to write garbage.  Just when he’s hit the all time low Newton learns that his old friend and fellow skeptic, Dr. Sixsmith, is terminally ill.  He rushes to the hospital but is too late.  That is, he’s too late until Dr. Sixsmith shows up in person.

Dr. Sixsmith pulls Newton into a brand new world, where he works for an ancient Greek (also dead), making sure that the bad dead guys stay dead and the good dead guys stay remembered.  Despite his skepticism Newton does excellent work and is soon dedicated to the effort.

Characters

Newton is excellent, a full person, still not terribly humble even after his drastic fall.  His girlfriend and daughter are less well drawn.  The best characters were the Greek dead guy bureaucrat, the vicar and the arch villain.   Outside of Newton the characterization was good but not great.

Humor and Plot

The Unhappy Medium is funny, full of snarky, dry humor.  Newton’s ex-wife adds a whole layer of nasty that the author manages to turn into funny.

The sinister property developers and evil arch villain are dedicated to evil, or, for the developers, to profits without consideration of any morality or social considerations.  For example their fondest wish is to raze St. Paul’s in London and build row houses.  Just listening to their spiel gives one the creeps – yet we have to smile at how deluded they are, how their dedication to money and destruction leaves them unhappy and living in a cold dump.

The arch villain isn’t funny because there are people like that, folks who are perfectly happy to kill everyone in the name of terror and control.  He’s a maniac but a scary one.

The book has some goofy theological backdrops, perfectly fine for a fantasy, but I do hope no one takes these seriously.

Overall The Unhappy Medium is a 4 star book.  If the other characters were a bit better done and the plot just a tad more focused it would be 5 stars.  I’ll look for more by author T. J. Brown.

 

Foxglove Summer – City Boy Goes to Country – Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch

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Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series gets better and better.  We last left Peter Grant devastated by a massive betrayal in Broken Homes.  Weeks later in Foxglove Summer he’s off to Herefordshire to check a former Folly member, now retired, as a possible suspect in a case of two missing 11 year old girls.  Peter quickly rules the former wizard from suspicion and offers his help to the local police who are overwhelmed.

Peter is pretty sure this will be a straight forward police case and is looking forward to something simple – no wizardry, no Faceless Man, no Tasers, no Mother Thames or her brood.  His happy certainty lasts right until he checks out the girls’ cell phones, found abandoned and non functional.  Peter recognizes the tell-tale pitting of electronics exposed to magic.

This is our first time seeing Peter operate alone and he does a grand job.  He searches all the past witness statements for “oddities” and sure enough, finds that one of the girls had an invisible friend. Sleuthing the modern way, with cheapo cell phones set up to register magic, plus plenty of gumshoe work and listening to what’s not said yields success.

Peter’s developed his magic skills immensely, witness the fact he could blow out fence gates on the run, something Nightingale said only about half the older generation could do.  He gets tantalizing clues about Nightingale and the debacle at Ettersberg and further insight into magic’s place in the world beyond London.

New Characters

Peter’s been entranced by Beverly Brook, sort-of 20-something daughter of Mama Thames and this time she shows up to help him out.  He helps her too, in several interesting ways.  Beverly is more human when she’s with Peter but she still has her river goddess innate presence.

We meet several new characters:  DCI Windrow and Inspector Edmondson, the leads on the kidnapping case, Dominic Croft, whom Windrow assigns to work with Peter, normally shrewd journalist Sharon Pike who bizarrely accuses the cops of covering up the real culprit, offering as evidence a piece of the plastic backing from a candy bar, the parents, Hugh Oswald the former wizard now bee keeper and Mellissa his granddaughter who may be part bee herself.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dominic or Sharon knock on the Folly door sometime to learn magic.

Aaronovitch makes these people real to us.  We don’t get a full character dissection on any of them but he shows us enough that we recognize them.  They are types yes, but with enough added humanity that they are people, not cardboard cutouts.

Setting

Peter’s way out of his element in the wilds of  Herefordshire but in true Peter Grant spirit quickly learns his way around and gets familiar enough with the local background to spot anomalies in the reforestation efforts.  He’s a amazing person whom I’d like to meet sometime.

The only map is on the front cover and I’m not familiar with Herefordshire – good thing we have Google maps and Google Earth! – but you don’t need to know the real countryside to follow the idea of wooded hills, pastures, fields, small towns, ridges and creeks.  Aaronovitch gives enough detail to make it interesting without trying to make it too realistic.

Plot

The plot was great.  As with all the Rivers of London novels we have lots of unanswered questions.  Who is the fairy queen and why did she want the girls?  Why did she want Peter and what did she plan to use him for?  Why did the unicorns chase the escaping girls right into the arms of Peter, Beverly and Dominic?  How did the fairy queen make a second, identical girl?

And last, how on earth would Peter et al explain the second daughter? And that they were giving the spare girl, who happened to be the biological human daughter, to Fleet to raise?

Summary

I have loved all the Rivers of London novels, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be a tie among Midnight Riot, Broken Homes and this one, Foxglove Summer.  It’s fun seeing Peter grow personally and as a wizard, London commentaries are hilarious, tension ever increasing, and minor characters are fun and well developed with just a few sentences.

5 Stars

 

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge – Drink Up and Kill Monsters

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Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge starts fast and fun, when new business grad Bailey Chen is attacked as she walks home from her job as a bar back.  Luckily she drank a screwdriver before leaving because her attackers were monsters – tremens – and the screwdriver – when made just exactly perfectly – imparts super strength.

Barkeepers are magicians who keep the world safe from monsters and get their super powers by mixing cocktails exactly right and using pure ingredients.  They are members of the Cupbearers, dedicated to keeping the world safe from tremens and use the Obvlinum to erase memories from us non-barkeepers.  (Presumably they make the drinks slightly wrong when serving to us regular customers.)

New idea, yes!  Great concept, unfortunately the rest of the book fell a bit short.

Once past the opener, Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge read like YA fiction, with Bailey, her high school best friend Zane, and Zane’s girlfriend Mona the mysterious, forming a love triangle. In between they serve drinks and fight monsters and worry about the politics in the bar keeping hierarchy.

I didn’t like the characters.  Bailey got As in high school and college by memorizing and makes flash cards about the company that she’s interviewing for a business job. She doesn’t know what she wants to be, only what she wants to own (apartment in trendy but cheap part of town), and as she herself put it, is a teenager grown old, not an adult.

Zane was on again/off again, inconsistent in loyalty and love, self-centered.  The other characters were equally boring and a politically correct mix of genders and backgrounds.  None seemed to exhibit particularly high moral standards or interest in much beyond food, sex, drinking and killing monsters.

The most interesting parts of Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge were the drink recipes and tidbits culled from the barkeeper’s manual, The Devil’s Water Dictionary.  These snippets had the same fun, tongue in cheek feel as the opening scene.

3 Stars.  The concept is 4 stars, original and could be fun, the teenage angst and modest characterization are distracting enough to warrant the lower rating.

Broken Homes – Supernatural Mystery Suspense Fantasy – Ben Aaronovitch

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Picking favorite books is a little picking favorite kids; you can’t.  So far I’ve loved all of Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant/Rivers of London series; Midnight Riot was grand, introducing us to Peter, his buddy Lesley, boss Inspector Nightingale, crypto-pathologist Dr Walid, assorted semi-supernatural rivers and semi-dead bad guys.  Moon Over Soho gave us jazz vampires and introduced the Faceless Man.  Whispers Underground was just a tiny step down the wow! scale as we plodded through London’s sewers and discovered the Quiet Folk.

Now we’ve Broken Homes, combining the best of the first three with more suspense and mystery.  Inspector Nightingale goes into action, Peter and Lesley chase bad guys, and best of all, Peter does his usual intuitive/random/unfocused policing.

I enjoy Peter’s curiosity and intuitive feel for hidden problems.  Combined with his talent for messing up, his unique approach to problems makes him feel like someone I know.  Peter tells the story himself, using his own colloquial slang grammar (“me and Lesley”) and shares his thoughts as he goes.  He is refreshing, honest with himself and it’s fun to ride along inside his head.

The book works on multiple levels.  It’s a police/mystery/suspense story as Peter discovers the plot and sleuths connections that are as wispy as cobwebs, a character story, and a wizard/magic fantasy.  Peter is the common element and he’s a great character, well thought out, rounded, real.

Broken Homes ramps up the stakes for Peter and Nightingale.  Earlier we danced around small disasters and caught glimpses of a larger threat; this time we can see more.  The Faceless Man is an example. Inspector Nightingale calls the Faceless Man a criminal, and so he is, but his aims are hidden until the end when he tells Peter he is pursuing power, more magic power than he can safely use within himself.

Broken Homes has great secondary characters, Betsy and Kevin of the slightly shady Tankridge family and Jake Phillips, socialist activist and balcony gardener.  (His garden sounded wonderful.)

Aaronovitch uses tiny details to make bit players real.  Example is how he presents Jake Phillips as dignified, older, dedicated in just a short paragraph.  Jake is completely unembarrassed when Peter catches him stooping to put a notice in Peter’s Skytower mail slot – a vastly undignified position.  Jake needs help to stand up, so we feel his age and arthritic back.

These encounters make the story richer, more real and add humor.  In fact Broken Homes had several laugh out loud scenes, particularly Peter’s comments on architecture and decorating.  Plus we got a rich list of new British slang terms and food types; I particularly liked reading about suet jam pudding.  For the uninitiated it is not the English version of Eskimo ice cream but a cross between a shortening-rich pastry, a steamed bread and jelly roll.  Maybe someday I’ll make one.

Broken Homes took the Rivers of London series on a slight turn that should result in better stories, a longer series, more difficulties and more realistic suspense.  Earlier we tiptoed through the tulips with Peter – despite horrible moments and murders in Midnight Riot it mostly seemed like magic was fun – but now it’s serious.  There are ethically-challenged wizards who don’t care whom they hurt (even if they do draw the line at mass murder) and there is something in the Folly basement…

Five Stars.

 

Decoding British-isms or English the Way Peter Grant Speaks

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I kept getting sidetracked when reading Ben Aaronovitch’s Broken Homes because I was curious about Peter Grant’s British-isms even when context made the meaning clear.  I kept my phone open to Wikipedia and Google and Dictionary and after a few hours reading as much online as in the book I decided to emulate Peter and note down what I found.  Then I read the book all the way through again without stopping – it is that good!

Kathy’s Guide to Peter Grant’s British-isms

Breeze Block = this one is grand.  It’s a cement block, and after living through 20 Michigan winters in a cement block house, “breeze block” is the perfect name.

Crittal strip window.  Crittal is an English window manufacturer, so I’m guessing this is a narrow transom window.

Damp Course = this one turned out to be my ignorance of building, not a British-ism at all.  It’s the waterproof layer one puts in a house.

Flat Packed Furniture = knocked down, stuff you buy in a box and assemble per the easy instructions.

Muggins = myself, me.

Mullered = beat up.

“Isn’t It” = rhetorical type question, way to end a statement without actually saying “duh, you dummy”.

Shebeen = pretty darn informal market, originally one selling unlicensed liquor

Tin = can.  (Yes, I know, anyone who reads any books by English novelists should know this one!)

Jam & Suet Pudding = Sort of a cross between jelly roll, pastry and lard in a steamed dessert. You make a pastry using suet (the cow version of lard and just as healthy), roll up with jam, then steam over boiling water.  Remember our English friends call desserts “puddings” and cookies are “biscuits”.  (Before I read the recipe I feared it might be a jam version of Eskimo ice cream.  Luckily for our English friends’ health, not so.)

Fried Slice = fried piece of bread.  Really.  Think of French toast but without the egg coating.

Candy Floss = cotton candy.

75 Inch Samsung Television in a Poor Person’s Apartment = Clue that said poor person might be collecting televisions that fall off trucks (or lorries).

Garden = yard, as in your front / side / back yard with lawn, bushes, trees and maybe a garden.

Krio = a real language, sort of a pidgin that Sierra Leone residents who originally migrated from Nova Scotia, ex slaves and similar developed.

Jumper = sweater.  This one used to throw me until I looked it up.  We call sleeveless dresses you wear over turtlenecks “jumpers” and they are ladies’ wear, not for men.  English men wear jumpers that are crew neck sweaters.

Artic = a type of articulated bus.

Lorry = truck.  This is one of the basics, like Hoovering for vacuuming or loo for bathroom.

Biro = ball point pen, so named because a gentleman named Biro invented them!

Council Housing = subsidized housing.  This was a fascinating topic, interesting to see differences between English and American solutions to house poorer people.  The town we lived in had subsidized housing but it looked just like regular apartment buildings, or sometimes people got vouchers (or equivalent) to rent a house.  It’s a little different in big cities where well-meaning planners built huge housing projects that today sadly sometimes are assaulted by gangs and may be rather nasty and unsafe.

Per Wikipedia at one time about 25% of all families lived in council housing; I don’t think it was ever so high here.  From the photos and descriptions council housing ranged from individual houses to more commonly duplexes, 4-apartment buildings and on up.  Enormous complexes like Sky Garden apparently got a bad rep, just as the mammoth projects did in the US.

Semi = duplex, two houses stuck together, often mirror images of each other.

Terrace Housing = town house, two story apartments built together in a single structure, each separate entrance.

Estates, as in Council Estates, to Live on an Estate = I’m not sure why the names include “estates” but it apparently refers to a group of homes of any design that are managed together.  I thought this was an odd term, and to live on an estate sounded strange to my ears.  My guess is that the term drifted over from the old lord of the manor who had his tenant farmers who lived on his estate.

Sink Estate = really bad locale, don’t go after dark type of council estate.

There you have it, British decoded for American ears.  Now back to the book…

 

 

 

Whispers Underground – Peter Grant #3 by Ben Aaronovitch

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I first met Peter Grant about a week ago where he met a ghost, Inspector Nightingale, an evil revenant and the merry crew of London police in Midnight Riot (see review here).  Peter and I hit it off big time and renewed our friendship in Moon over Soho (review here), now we are once again traipsing through London in Whispers Underground.

Peter is one of those characters you empathize with – you really feel like you are right with him solving crimes, studying Latin, practicing magic and trying to avoid major faux pas with the police force such as not setting Covent Garden on fire.  The only problem is that empathizing with Peter in Whispers Underground means you are wading through London sewers right alongside.  Yuck!

I’ve usually found that the second book in a series is the weakest, but this series is the exception. I liked Moon Over Soho a lot and Whispers Underground lost a little of the zany action and fast thinking.  Given the high 5 stars I gave Moon, all that means is that Whispers slipped to oh, maybe a 4.

Why was Whispers was less satisfying?

Peter was in plenty of danger in Whispers (and the two earlier books) but the actual danger moments, getting shot and buried alive, didn’t feel real.  Peter created a shield that protected from the bullets and hallucinated during the burial.  Unless Aaronovitch revisits his hallucination in later books the several pages spent visiting with the dream line Mr. Tyburn seemed like a side trip that went nowhere.

There were a couple off tune plot elements, like the visits with Albert Woodville-Gentle.  It felt like Aaronovitch originally planned to build more on the Ethically Challenged Magician but took a wrong turn. Instead he was a throwaway character that didn’t add anything to the plot.

The Lost Tribe of Navvies (tunnel builders from the 1800s who decided to stay underground) made no sense whatsoever.  We never learned why they decided to stay underground for 150 years.  Peter and Leslie were smart enough to realize there was no solution for the tunnel dwellers; if they were brought into the open the massive British social services and social requirements would descend and make their lives miserable.  We didn’t get resolution here.

The book had its fun moments, especially when Peter decides to go ceramic hunting and has to explain himself to the pragmatic Stephanopoulos.  New minor character Zach Palmer is a shameless grifter that we didn’t get to do much with and I hope we meet up again with FBI agent Reynolds.

Overall I’d give this 4 stars, very good but not quite the fun, clever novel we enjoyed in the first two Peter Grant.

Moon Over Soho – Intuitive Wizard’s Approach to Police Work – Ben Aaronovitch

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Last week I found the delicious Peter Grant series of London copper/wizard adventures by Ben Aaronovitch (read review of Midnight Riot here) and quickly requested the next book, Moon over Soho.  Wow.  What an excellent piece of fun/fantasy/true crime/romance/interior design critique!

Our hero, Peter Grant, gets deeper into magic and stumbles across the dark side.  We have at least 3 mysteries happening:

The jazz vampire
The gonad gourmet
The repulsive faceless guy
And if not already covered by one of the above, the magician behind the Strip Club of Dr. Moreau

The complex plot fits together and I didn’t have to go back and forth to clear up loose points.  Once again Aaronovitch brings us quirky, interesting characters and bit players, with lots of London tourist guidance all carefully layered into a fast, nifty plot.  I won’t spoil the story but be aware that Peter manages to cause tens of thousands in damages when he dragoons an ambulance and dumps the ambulance-ee into the Thames.  Then there’s the helicopter problem, the demon traps, his girlfriend’s missing face, his other girlfriend’s obsession with jazz….

Happiness is Learning Latin While Catching Bad Guys

Several Amazon reviewers compared the Peter Grant series to Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, I suspect because both series have the wizard-in-the-big-city motif, but the two are completely different.  Aaronovitch’s book has darkness and evil (the jazz vampires were bad by accident) but they are happier and happy-go-lucky Peter relishes the good and is joyfully ensconced  in the police, apprehending bad guys.

Detective Inspector Nightingale, Peter’s boss, is training him to be a wizard and we get a glimpse of the not-much-like-Hogwarts school for magically inclined folks that Nightingale attended back before WW1.  The school is long closed and Peter has to learn the magic formae with Nightingale’s help, hundreds of hours of practice, with the aid of obscure Latin texts.

Peter is a bit scattershot.  His friends and bosses all tell him to focus, but I think he is focused, he just lets his mind wander down the side tracks and dusty alleys of everything else that’s going on.  He works by intuition.  I like the guy.

Architecture and Bad Interior Design

One thing I loved about all the Peter Grant books so far are the asides and running commentary on the quality (dismal) of the architecture and interior furnishings where Peter goes.  We see nightclubs with gold and crimson flocked wallpaper, interview rooms shoehorned into former closets, offices with cheap wallboard and stack box (I assume another term for knocked down/you assemble) furniture, not to mention Tupperware office buildings.  I notice buildings and the art – or lack of it – in offices and it makes me queasy to see some of the atrocious decorating.  (Where I used to work replaced their modest wall art including a couple very nice paintings with enormous photographs of unhappy looking people.  No idea why but it was depressing.)

Summary

If Moon Over Soho intrigues you, then stop now and start with the first novel with Peter Grant, Midnight Riot (aka Rivers of London.)  You can catch up on the characters and back story if you start with Moon, but you’ll enjoy the book more if you read them sequentially.  Besides Midnight Riot was wonderful, so do yourself a favor and read it.