Kate Griffin (2) (1986–)

Sometimes an author captures my imagination, and as long as they fail to become blazingly incompetent, I’m along for the ride. So it was with A Madness of Angels.

Matthew Swift wakes up from death, lost, confused, unaware its been two years since he died, as for him it feels like moments ago. The terrible and fascinating hook to his story is that as a sorcerer, he was dialing the phone as he died–and the phone lines are the home of the electric blue angels, the bits and pieces of humanity spun out over the wires and taking on life of their own. When Matthew is brought back to life, he is no longer alone in his familiar body–he shares it with the electric blue angels, along with their talents.

“We be light, we be life, we be fire!
We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!
Come be we and be free!”

Griffin’s concept is given life (pardon the pun) by a fascinating use of language, a type of lyricism rarely seen in urban fantasy and which reminded me as much of scat and bebop as a written narrative. And, as I pointed out in a Booklikes post, more than a little bit of Fame’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” Although I enjoy a wide range of music, my reading experience and my musical listening experience are almost always two separate things; Griffin provided me a rare experience and enjoyment with her lyrical writing. With the musicality of the narrative, all I needed was a semi-coherent plot and I was sold. Thankfully, the rest of the details were more than competent.

A hallmark of many types of urban fantasy and mysteries are the emphasis on location. The setting is virtually a character, providing mood, spiking thought, inciting action. London is a chief player in this series, and with loving and full detail, it is clear Griffin is no mere tourist (I once read an apocalypse book set in a New York that the author very clearly had only visited–if seen in person at all). Some places are so iconic that they take on a role beyond their actuality. Hollywood is one of those places–dirty, dingy, filled with the outcasts of humanity and cockroach-infested diners, the imaginary Hollywood bares little resemblance to the reality. Not this London. This one is very real,with tired commuters, overflowing rubbish bins, and confusing and obscure tube system. I liked it, and because the angels are new to the corporeal experience, their joy in the details, in all their glamorous and dirty varieties, was contagious.

If the rest of the characters weren’t quite as developed as Swift/Angels and London, they were still reasonably done. There is a nice ambivalence surrounding Matthew’s former teacher Bakker, for his role in teaching him the craft and his ultimate path. Oda, an anti-magic fanatic, has little finesse to her arc, but is done well enough that it added an element of tension. Sinclair and Charlie were very interesting and not at all predictable. There's a nice amount of dialogue, occasionally delightfully described:

"'Yes,' she said, in the weary voice of someone who knows where this conversation is going and can't believe she has to wait at the traffic lights to get there."

Magic has an unusual flair as well. It is supposed to be ‘urban’ magic, evolving to its place and time, and one of the first malevolent creatures encountered is a trash-beast. Then there’s the magic of the city–the rituals of public transport gating, the mystery of the ATMs. I loved the graffiti-magic angle; and a perfect twist on the out-front yet underground language of the city, decipherable to those in the know. The magical healer connected to the NHS cracked me up. The city creatures are perhaps not precisely magical, but echo real life cities with an abundance of pigeons, rats and foxes. The Beggar King and Bag Lady were nice magical elements, echoing the parable of those least among us. Griffin cleverly avoids the over-powered magical protagonist as well. As Matthew is so new to his body and abilities from the electric angels, there’s believable limits on what he is reasonably able to accomplish, despite the abilities of both sorcerer and electric angels.

Plot is perhaps the least unusual aspect of the story, but with so much going on with narrative and magic, it’s rather nice to have something sort of straightforward. Swift and the angels seem to agree on revenge, and part of toppling a mighty sorcerer means toppling the pillars that support him. I’m not entirely sure this worked logically in any sense of the word, since everyone was on the defensive after the first went down, and because the sorcerer seemed more than capable of taking care of himself without said supports. The mystery surrounding Matthew’s death was rather unsurprising, as well as the ultimate denouement.

That said, I’ll undoubtedly read it again–a story that hinges on narrative, character and world-building is enjoyably revisitable. The enthusiasm Swift and the angels have for life is contagious, and make it a moderately uplifting read. This is one that needs to be was added to my personal collection. Highly recommended, but only for those that can tolerate a certain poetic laxity of narrative.

11/19 Re-read. Okay, maybe it loses luster a bit on the fifth or sixth re-read. Also, read the kindle version bc I wanted to highlight. Interestingly, a lot of it is about swathes of text rather than short bursts of sentences. Also note, Kindle edition is full of formatting errors and was a bit more distracting than it should have been.

08/21 This is one of the most satisfying books I own. Lovely language complex enough to hold up on re-read; generally positive/proactive, without being depressing (eyeballing Steven Brust); interesting world-building; forward-moving plot; and (spoiler) satisfying, if complicated resolution.… (more)

Notes from a third read:

Matthew Swift is back, but no one is exactly sure that he is him. He visits the shop of a prophet who once foretold his death:

"'You want to tell me that you're Matthew Swift.'
'Is this a bad thing?'
'You are a dead man, Matthew Swift.'
'You must have customers flocking to hear your predictions.'
'It was a statement of fact, of history.'
'It pays for prophets to be cryptic, particularly in this litigious age,' I wheezed."

The sorcerer Matthew Swift was killed--or at least disappeared, leaving an extremely copious amount of his spilled blood behind--two years ago, and has suddenly reappeared with an apparent personality disorder and more magic than ever at his fingertips. A visit to a nurse at a supernatural hospital sums up the problem:

"'No. We want...no. Please. Help us.'
'Help us, or help me?'
'We are the same.'
'You sure?' she asked nicely. 'Only it seems to me that one of you has blue blood, and one of you has red, and one of you knows about the things that were in the phone line and one of you, probably the clinically dead one, has a better grounding in the personal ego--not that I want to speculate beyond my training, you understand. You may share the same skin and the same voice, but I'm really not entirely sure that you're working on the same track."

So serious, and yet there are flashes of humor here. A temporary removal of the fourth wall made me laugh. After all, we are talking urban fantasy:

"For a ludicrous moment I wondered if there were any air ducts I could crawl through to get inside the office; but life was not like the movies."

And a social statement, and why I consider Kate Griffin's urban fantasies to be something far more substantial than candy bar reads:

"If asked why they did not give charity [to beggars], the standard reply is 'They would only have spent it on drugs.' Unkind as this is, the bastard's reply is even worse: 'It's their fault they're here; why should I waste my money on someone who can't be saved?'
Thus, with a single swoop, the entire population of old, young, black, white, frightened, bold, subdued, cowering, cold, ill, hungry, thirsty, dirty or addicted are classified as self-destructive, and every ignored face, every shadow blotted out of the memory of the stranger on the street can be classified by a single word--failed."… (more)

One of my problems with reading books in a completed series is the tendency to read through the books back-to-back. I did that with the Matthew Swift series by Kate Griffin, and I think my first read of The Neon Court suffered, strictly because of a surfeit of Matthew Swift, along with surprisingly similar plotting and characterization to the prior book. Had I been waiting a year between books, I wouldn’t have minded. But I didn’t, so I did. Luckily, my second read was much more enjoyable.

True to format, the story begins with a ringing phone, and the bottom falling out of Matthew’s world. It appears he has been summoned by Oda, the magic-hating, sometimes-bodyguard, fundamentalist to a burning building. Oda, normally human and quite mortal, appears to have sustained a major stab wound to her heart, and yet here she is, walking and talking. After an eventful escape, hampered by Penny, Matthew’s new apprentice, and an unknown fae, Matthew’s presence is requested at a meeting with an Alderman, Ms. Dees. She presents the latest magical political crisis to Matthew, which he summarizes in his usual charming manner:

“‘Ms. Dees,’ I said, ‘let me get this absolutely clear. The Neon Court–a bunch of narcissistic wankers who haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that the age of the Faerie Court is over–have this major-league grief with the Tribe, a bunch of self-mutilating wankers who haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that the world isn’t out to get them personally–and someone somewhere is dead, which is very sad, and they’re threatening to kill each other and I care… how?’“

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Because Goodreads' customer support are also a bunch of wankers who would delete my review if enough people complained, I post my full reviews at my site, Booklikes and Leafmarks.

http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/the-neon-court-by-kate-griffin/
and
http://carols.booklikes.com/post/800384/the-neon-court-by-kate-griffin… (more)

A solid urban fantasy read.

The second installment of the Matthew Swift series, The Midnight Mayor continues to follow recently reincarnated Matthew Swift and the co-inhabitants of his body, the electric angels. Once again, Matthew regains consciousness near a public phone, lying in the ground in the dark and the rain; cold, burned, and bloody. As he tries to orient himself, hooded faceless spectres start to stalk him. He manages to escape after some clever displays of sorcery and goes to find the Whites, the graffiti magicians, for healing. Vera, as enigmatic as always, gets him fixed up with Dr. Seah. Dr. Seah has questions about his injuries: “Now, while every case is, like, unique, I gotta tell you, electrocution by telephone leading to the appearance of a cross carved in the palm of the victim’s hand is unusual even for central London. You seriously have no idea how it got there?“

In the midst of recovery, The Alderman intrude. Much like conventional politicians, the Alderman (and women) are largely concerned with managing the magical influences of the city for London’s greater good. Unfortunately, they have their suspicions about Matthew’s role in the recent murder of the Midnight Mayor, the head of the Alders, and it’s mutual antipathy from the start: “The Alderman who’d spoken was young, male, and destined to rule the world. He had dark blond hair, slightly curled, a face just bordering on deeply tanned, bright blue eyes, a hint of freckle and a set of teeth you could have carved a piano with. If I hated the Aldermen on basic principle, I hated him on direct observation.“

Mayhem ensues, and before long, Matthew is roped into solving the mystery of the systematic destruction of London’s magical protectors. The religious fundamentalist Oda is once again assigned to Matthew, and this time there are resources from the Aldermen. There’s also a missing teenage boy who Matthew is determined to find.

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The plot moves relatively quickly, but as a sorcerer who is connected to the magic of the city, events are often broken up or transitioned through long descriptive passages about the city. At times it worked, and at other times, less so. Although some scenes created the feel of London to a non-Londoner, some were so focused on observing the surroundings that they didn’t quite have a sense of weighty history, nor the bemused sensory experience of the angels. There’s a definite moral ambiguity to many aspects of the storyline, and I find that it was one of the aspects I enjoyed about the book–there wasn’t necessarily facile answers, and that achievement of the goals comes with costs. I enjoyed the complexity of the plotting–a lot of questions are raised in the search for answers, much like real life. Are the angels benign? Is the Alders’ goal of protecting the City of London at the expense of the people worthwhile? Is there such a thing as a selfless motive?

Magical elements continue to be fascinating, from London’s warding magic traditions, to magic linked to the city at time of day, to more modern incarnations of evil, such as the ‘saturate,’ a giant fatty blob no doubt based on a recent story. I continue to enjoy the fascinating magic of the Whites–“it was realised that the image of a great eye painted at the end of Platform 14… was a scrying tool of infinitely more value than your traditional bowl of silver water, and that nothing bound as effectively as a double red parking line burnt chemically into the earth“–and the magic surrounding a pair of shoes was inventive and yet logical. The updated three hags was also a fun twist on a fairly common myth.

Narrative style has changed slightly from the first book. I remain fond of Swift’s voice. For those who might have been bothered by the poetic deconstruction in the first, the second book is far more coherent, with Swift and the angels gradually assuming more of a uniform identity, and structure largely in paragraph form, complete sentences and all.

Characterization remains a strong point, and I felt there were enough support for the side characters that they obtained individuality. I was impressed by how much Griffin was able to imply about the former Midnight Mayor from the contents of his pockets. Dr. Seah remains one of my favorites with her slightly impaired bedside manner (“Dr. Seah knew the sound of a refusal when she heard one, and knew that the only way to get round these things, was to ignore them before they could become admissible in court”), along with the ghostly nurse of the (almost) abandoned NHS hospital.

There’s definitely a fair amount of humor in the book, which helps lighten the fairly significant consequences. Griffin does a nice job of not allowing humor to overshadow the action or to sacrifice character for the quip. The humor is often subtle or slightly skew:

“‘A large number of people, I suspect. But they wouldn’t know what to make of it.’
‘Anyone… of alternative inclining?
‘I’m guessing you’re not referring to sex, biology or morals?‘”

“I looked him up and down. He seemed like a principled man, the last thing I needed to see.”

I enjoyed it a great deal, and have many more scribbled page numbers with quotes to prove it. I’ll have to settle for adding it to my library and re-reading at leisure.

Re-read January 2018. Still good. Glad it is in my personal library. Will note that Matthew's personality actually seemed less consistent, more timid than the first book, which made him harder to appreciate. More of a 4-star read this time rather than the 4.5 on my blog.… (more)