A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin
Jan. 14th, 2010 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitWow, I'm reviewing a book I actually like! Who'd have imagined it?
Kate Griffin's A Madness of Angels, Or, the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (Orbit, 2009) could, I suppose, be classified as urban fantasy. But there's no Buffy clone here, no romance with a hot vampire or werewolf: none of the derivative crap that has made "urban fantasy" a label I shy away from. Instead, A Madness of Angels is a fantasy about a city (London) and its particular magic. Admittedly, this isn't wildly new territory (I thought of both Hellblazer and Neverwhere while reading the novel) but it's well done, and I find it impossible not to like a book in which an Oyster card can be a key spell component.
Oh, and the titular angels aren't what you're thinking.
Here's the premise: Matthew Swift, a sorcerer, is unexpectedly resurrected after having been murdered two years earlier. His friends have disappeared, his house belongs to someone else, he has no idea who or what brought him back, and he also is no longer alone in his own head. Meanwhile, all the magical practicioners in London are being forcibly recruited into a shady organization called the Tower, and those who refuse tend to die unpleasantly.
Plot isn't one of the novel's great strengths; things play out, for the most part, as you'd expect (with the exception of one particular development I was dreading but was sure would happen, which made me extremely happy by not occurring). Its strengths are elsewhere, in areas that I care about more. Matthew Swift, a fairly untypical urban fantasy protagonist, is appealing in his lack of badassery. The magical aspects of the story are creative and well thought-out, and the prose is unusually good. Here's a sample from early in the book, just after Swift resurrects in what used to be his house but is now occupied by others:
Griffin is good at characterization, but oddly enough there's not much character development or interaction in the book, perhaps because London itself is such a presence. The relationship between Swift and his city is the book's central one, and it's a fascinating perspective even though I would have liked to see Matthew re-establishing some of the rich emotional connections suggested in the passage I quoted above.
My biggest problem with A Madness of Angels is LGB representation. (I'm leaving off the T deliberately, because I think that the representation of trans* people and trans* issues is distinct from LGB representation.) The novel has only character shown to be queer, and he's a villain. Griffin is extremely careful not to imply that he's a villain because he's gay, or that he's villainously gay (e.g. a rapist or abuser of other men); in fact it's made very clear that he's considerate of the men he has sex with. Nevertheless, this kind of thing raises a red flag for me.
There's a faint ambiguity around Swift's own sexuality, so faint I'm not sure what to make of it. He's certainly interested in women, and we don't learn of any relationships or sex with men, but he also comes across as very aware of the physical attractiveness of certain male characters. And there's a scene in which he has to buy a piece of jewelry for magical purposes, and the clerk says something about "the lucky girl, or is it a guy?" Swift responds that it's not a gift, but that if there's ever a lucky girl or guy, he'll keep the shop in mind. I don't know if that moment is meant to hint that Swift is bisexual or to demonstrate that he's not the kind of asshole who'll freak out if someone thinks he might be Not Straight. Anyway, if there's a sequel to A Madness of Angels, I'm hoping for better in the area of LGB inclusion, whether that means Swift being bi or just some non-evil LGB characters.
Since I've been discussing representation, I'll also note that there are a number of interesting female characters, all of whom have their own concerns and agendas. None of the women is just there to be Swift's sidekick or love interest.
I wanted to conclude, above the cut, with a word about the book's appearance. Basically, it looks awful. The cover image is cheap, generic and in some ways misleading, the typeface on the dust jacket (especially the blurbs on the back cover and flaps) looks amateurish, and the blurb text is about as lame and unappealing as I've ever seen. If I hadn't looked inside the book and seen that Griffin can write a good sentence, I wouldn't have bothered with it. And I was at the library, where getting a bad book would cost me nothing but some irritation. Orbit's packaging has done this novel a huge disservice, and one reason I've reviewed it here is to encourage you, if you see a copy somewhere, to give it a chance and not judge it by its craptastic, e-publisher-looking cover.
Kate Griffin's A Madness of Angels, Or, the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (Orbit, 2009) could, I suppose, be classified as urban fantasy. But there's no Buffy clone here, no romance with a hot vampire or werewolf: none of the derivative crap that has made "urban fantasy" a label I shy away from. Instead, A Madness of Angels is a fantasy about a city (London) and its particular magic. Admittedly, this isn't wildly new territory (I thought of both Hellblazer and Neverwhere while reading the novel) but it's well done, and I find it impossible not to like a book in which an Oyster card can be a key spell component.
Oh, and the titular angels aren't what you're thinking.
Here's the premise: Matthew Swift, a sorcerer, is unexpectedly resurrected after having been murdered two years earlier. His friends have disappeared, his house belongs to someone else, he has no idea who or what brought him back, and he also is no longer alone in his own head. Meanwhile, all the magical practicioners in London are being forcibly recruited into a shady organization called the Tower, and those who refuse tend to die unpleasantly.
Plot isn't one of the novel's great strengths; things play out, for the most part, as you'd expect (with the exception of one particular development I was dreading but was sure would happen, which made me extremely happy by not occurring). Its strengths are elsewhere, in areas that I care about more. Matthew Swift, a fairly untypical urban fantasy protagonist, is appealing in his lack of badassery. The magical aspects of the story are creative and well thought-out, and the prose is unusually good. Here's a sample from early in the book, just after Swift resurrects in what used to be his house but is now occupied by others:
One of the women screamed. The sound sent a shudder down my spine, smashed through the horror and incomprehension in my brain, and at last let me understand, let me finally realise that this was no longer my house, that I had been gone too long, and that to these people I was the intruder, they the rightful owners. The scream slammed into my brain like a train hitting the buffers and tore a path through my consciousness that let everything else begin to flood in: the true realisation that if my house was not mine, my job, my friends, my old life would not be mine, nor my possessions, my money, my debts, my clothes, my shoes, my films, my music; all gone in a second, things I had owned since a scrawny teenager, the electric toothbrush my father had given me in a fit of concern for my health, the photos of my friends and the places I'd been, the copy of Calvin and Hobbes my first girlfriend had given me as a sign of enduring friendship the Christmas after we'd split up, my favourite pair of slippers, the holiday I was planning to the mountains of northern Spain, all, everything I had worked for, everything I had owned and wanted to achieve, vanished in that scream.Griffin has a gift for vivid details and for conveying emotion through style. She also creates a deep and striking sense of place, which is both necessary and appropriate in a book like this. Occasionally I found the long descriptive passages fatiguing--don't worry, most of the sentences aren't as long as the one quoted--but I've always had trouble visualizing things from verbal descriptions, so that could just be me.
Griffin is good at characterization, but oddly enough there's not much character development or interaction in the book, perhaps because London itself is such a presence. The relationship between Swift and his city is the book's central one, and it's a fascinating perspective even though I would have liked to see Matthew re-establishing some of the rich emotional connections suggested in the passage I quoted above.
My biggest problem with A Madness of Angels is LGB representation. (I'm leaving off the T deliberately, because I think that the representation of trans* people and trans* issues is distinct from LGB representation.) The novel has only character shown to be queer, and he's a villain. Griffin is extremely careful not to imply that he's a villain because he's gay, or that he's villainously gay (e.g. a rapist or abuser of other men); in fact it's made very clear that he's considerate of the men he has sex with. Nevertheless, this kind of thing raises a red flag for me.
There's a faint ambiguity around Swift's own sexuality, so faint I'm not sure what to make of it. He's certainly interested in women, and we don't learn of any relationships or sex with men, but he also comes across as very aware of the physical attractiveness of certain male characters. And there's a scene in which he has to buy a piece of jewelry for magical purposes, and the clerk says something about "the lucky girl, or is it a guy?" Swift responds that it's not a gift, but that if there's ever a lucky girl or guy, he'll keep the shop in mind. I don't know if that moment is meant to hint that Swift is bisexual or to demonstrate that he's not the kind of asshole who'll freak out if someone thinks he might be Not Straight. Anyway, if there's a sequel to A Madness of Angels, I'm hoping for better in the area of LGB inclusion, whether that means Swift being bi or just some non-evil LGB characters.
Since I've been discussing representation, I'll also note that there are a number of interesting female characters, all of whom have their own concerns and agendas. None of the women is just there to be Swift's sidekick or love interest.
I wanted to conclude, above the cut, with a word about the book's appearance. Basically, it looks awful. The cover image is cheap, generic and in some ways misleading, the typeface on the dust jacket (especially the blurbs on the back cover and flaps) looks amateurish, and the blurb text is about as lame and unappealing as I've ever seen. If I hadn't looked inside the book and seen that Griffin can write a good sentence, I wouldn't have bothered with it. And I was at the library, where getting a bad book would cost me nothing but some irritation. Orbit's packaging has done this novel a huge disservice, and one reason I've reviewed it here is to encourage you, if you see a copy somewhere, to give it a chance and not judge it by its craptastic, e-publisher-looking cover.
