davidgillon | Recently Read - 23-10-19 (Reply)

I forgot these when listing stuff I'd recently read the other day (my kindle was on charge in the other room, when I'd normally have it at my elbow when doing this kind of thing.

Crow Investigations: The Night Raven, Sarah Painter

Lydia Crow is back in London, somewhat against her will. She moved to Glasgow and became a junior PI to get away from her family, but the last husband she caught cheating on his wife is threatening to hire someone to kill her, and her manager thinks a couple of weeks of unpaid leave in another part of the country is the appropriate solution. Being back in London is a problem, because her family has a bit of a rep around Camberwell and her father spent a lot of cred to bring her up outside of the family 'business', now run by Uncle Charlie. But she needs somewhere to stay that isn't her parents, because reasons, and Uncle Charlie just offered her somewhere out of the blue, and it's free. Ish. Even if it is a flat above the Fork, a long-closed greasy-spoon.

Lydia is barely through the front door when the proverbial bullet-headed thug is demanding she throw herself off the roof. Only he goes over the edge himself, courtesy of the resident ghost. Did I mention Lydia sees dead people? And Uncle Charlie cannot know, because that would mean Lydia is a proper Crow, not the talentless sport her father led her uncle to believe she was.

Oh, and apparently she now has a flat-share with a ghost.

Bodies splattering onto the pavement several storeys down are a bit of a messy problem, so Lydia has to call 999. Or rather she elects to call 999, rather than calling Uncle Charlie and having the problem disappeared. Which brings in DCI Fleet, who is unfortunately local, meaning he knows exactly who Uncle Charlie is. Fleet is also unfortunately yummy, and from the way he keeps popping back, appears to find Lydia just as enticing.

But of course bodies splattering onto the pavement is not that kind of thing that Uncle Charlie could miss, and when he comes to check on Lydia, he comes with a little favour she could do for him. Her 19 year old cousin Maddie is missing, and Charlie needs her found. And Crows don't go to the police (well, not proper Crows, anyway).

As a detective story I'm not sure that this is a particularly strong entrant to the field, but as a noir-flavoured introduction to the world of the Crows, and the other three magical London families (Silver, Fox and Pearl) it's a good one.

The Silver Mark, Sarah Painter

Lydia Crow is bored. Business for Crow Investigations is, if not thriving, at least plentiful enough to keep her busy. Unfortunately every case is a suspected infidelity case, and she really wants something classier to get her teeth into. Jason the ghost would love to help, unfortunately he still can't set foot outside the door of the Fork, and has a panic attack every time Lydia suggests forcing it, or looking into exactly how he died. So when a City financier is found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in a clearly deliberate recreation of the Roberto Calvi ('God's Banker') murder, Lydia decides to investigate. Which brings some tension into her relationship with DCI Fleet. Not tension for him, he'd probably prefer she didn't interfere, but if she's really set on it and he can find a way to get her the info without leaving a set of digital footprints in the database of a Murder Investigation Team he's not actually on, then he's perfectly willing. No, the tension's all on Lydia's part, because the professional PI part of her is adamant she shouldn't be banging her police source, and the oh, god, he's yummy part of her is less than convinced.

But investigating the murder quickly crosses her trail with that of the Silvers, and Uncle Charlie has concerns. There's been peace between London's magical families (the Pearlies can sell you anything, the Silvers can convince you anything, the Foxes meddle, and the Crows, well don't ask what the Crows did) since the middle of WWII, and investigating a Silver is not the way to keep the peace, particularly not when it's brilliant defence barrister Maria Silver, the apple of her father Alejandro's eye, doubly so when Alejandro is senior partner of Silver and Silver, LLP, and head of the Silver family, the kind of man who idly notes that it was the Silvers who had the House of Lords burnt down in the 1800s. But Lydia wants justice, or at least to solve the case, no matter who it means she has to upset. Though probably she'd have preferred not to upset Uncle Charlie.

I think this works better as a detective story than the first novel. In fact it's three detective stories as Lydia does all the investigating while also tailing two separate infidelity suspects. I did find the focusing onto Maria Silver rather too fast at the time, but on going back to the text the link is clearly there, it just isn't spelled out (literally, Lydia's shown a name that isn't mentioned), and the family background is just as enticing.

The next book promises to be Foxes, because teen-Lydia's skeevy ex, Paul Fox, has been sniffing around for two books now, and by the end of this one he has her manoeuvred into a position where she can't turn down his case.

Companion Pieces, Melissa F Olson

Short-stories to go with Olson's interlinked Scarlett Bernard and Allison 'Lex' Luther series. I'm now completely up to date with both series, but as I haven't actually done a proper review of either I'll leave these for now.

Magic on The Storm, Devon Monk

Book 4 (IIRC) in the Allie Beckstrom series. There's a magical storm approaching and Portland's members of the Magical Authority, which secretly polices the magical world, and of which Allie is the newest member, need to be ready for whatever it may unleash. But there are tensions in the Authority, and when Allie is called in by the actual police to investigate a break-in at a Beckstrom Industries lab, one which included a serious assault on her pregnant stepmother Violet and her bodyguard, she's disturbed to find evidence that suggests the perpetrators may have been the Authority. So it's up to Allie, eye-candy boyfriend Zayvion, and Authority Goth-badboy Shamus to save the day.

Not sure if I'm falling out of like with this series, or if it's just been too long since I read any of them. Definitely not the place to start.

Skinwalker (Jane Yellowknife 1), Faith Hunter

Re-read, I really should read more of these.

A Natural History of Dragons, Marie Brennan

I think this was my third attempt to get into this, but it was worth the perseverance. If you aren't a Regency fan then this may be a little slow starting (hence the three attempts), but once Isabella, Lady Trent hits adulthood, and the Season, and marriage, it picks up. Isabella's world isn't ours, but it's definitely been cribbing from the Cliff Notes, and Isabella's Scirland is definitely Regency England. Which is a crushing environment in which to grow up if you're a girl of good birth who is fascinated by natural history, and most of all by dragons - a fascination which nearly gets her killed before she's much past her 14th birthday, which takes some effort seeing that Scirland doesn't have any true dragons. But she survives, and has her coming-out season, and a fortunate encounter at the Royal Menagerie leads to her marriage to Jacob Camherst, son of a baronet, and a man who shares her interest in dragons.

Jacob isn't enlightened enough to just let Isabella run off to satisfy her interests, but he's quite willing to let her pursue her secondary interest in 'sparklings', which it is heavily suggested are actually insect/songbird-sized dragons. But then noted naturalist Lord Hilford proposes an expedition to study the Vystrani rock-wyrms, and invites Jacob to go, which brings her true feelings tumbling out, and Jacob is ultimately unable to say no to her, even though it inevitably will be a scandal when the story comes out.

So it's Isabella, Jacob, Lord Hilford and his assistant Mr Wilker off to the wilds of Vystrana, which is roughly speaking a Russian-occupied Balkan state, Ruritania with dragons, if the height of Ruritanian society was having enough sheep to have someone else look after them. But if Vystrana doesn't have high society, it does have dragons, dragons which attack their little mule-train even before they arrive at their mountain village base, something the locals swear isn't normal. I did like the way Brennan approaches the socio-dynamics of the situation. There's a lot of tension between Isabella and the self-educated Mr Wilker, and both of them are at fault, and there's an all-too-convincing "shout at the locals loud enough and they'll understand" dynamic in their relationship with the residents. I mean they could be worse, they're actually willing to take advice, but they know they're ~~Englishmen~~ Scirlanders, and god's gift to the benighted locals. Mostly it comes down to Isabella to sort things out, with the help (or eyes-rolling acquiescence) of her locally acquired 'lady's maid', Dagmira.

This really is in the Ruritania tradition, there are fiendish ~~Russian~~ Bulskevan nobles, scheming mad scientists (more mad scientists than you can shake a stick at*), and Englishmen being manly. But there's also Isabella, a naturalist in the Darwinian tradition (the one that means going out and getting yourself into all kinds of trouble with the locals in the name of science). Which I suppose makes this the love-child of The Prisoner of Zenda and The Origin of Species.

* Well, if you count the Hilford party.

Definitely worth reading.