Book Review: Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

Reviewed by J. D. Popham

Until now the Rivers of London series has kept Police Constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant close to home and followed his encounters with the ghosts, mystical creatures and Newtonian magics that exist just beyond the public's sight in contemporary London.  In London, of course, even things that go bump in the night are subject to the Queen’s peace, and the Metropolitan Police has the job of dealing with breaches of said peace; even when they involve malevolent spirits, jazz vampires and river goddesses.  

Foxglove Summer, the fifth book in the series, takes PC Grant out of his beloved London and deep into the English countryside; to Herefordshire, to be precise.  There, two eleven year-old girls have gone missing and the search for them has captured the attention of the 24-hour news machine and thus the British public. What with the disturbing connection between the blood of innocents and the more ethically challenged magics, Grant is dispatched by Inspector Nightingale to check in on an elderly wizard, long retired to the area, in order to confirm that he is not somehow involved in the girl's disappearance. 

Before long both Peter Grant and the urban river goddess Beverly Brook, are drawn into the search proper. What follows is a very pleasant collision between urban Fantasy and the rustic/rural wellspring of the tales and folklore that form much of modern fantasy's foundation.  At the same time Foxglove Summer's police procedural elements get the opportunity to rub shoulders with British police/detective fiction's countryside tradition. 
  
The urban/rural divide in English crime fiction is one of long standing.  Sherlock Holmes famously opined in Silver Blaze that "the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside".  Happily, Aaronovitch avoids reaching for the threadbare tropes about the city cop out of his element in the sticks.  PC Grant is as good humored as he is tough and clever, and his view of the countryside and its denizens is pragmatic and even-handed.  Besides, between his duties as a copper in the ongoing search for the missing girls, magical doings afoot, and a river goddess to act as his liaison with the local genius loci, boredom is the least of Peter Grant's worries.  

London has been central to the Rivers series so far, and setting Foxglove Summer in the English countryside makes evident the degree to which the city drives the tempo and energy of Aaronovitch's Peter Grant stories. The little town of Rushpool lacks the kinetic charge of London, and not even the frantic search for the girls and the accompanying news media feeding frenzy is going to change that.

This, however, is where Aaronovitch shows his skill as a story-teller. He never fights his setting or attempts to press Rushpool or its denizens into behaving out of character as a means of injecting energy into Foxglove Summer.  Rather, he lets the story move at a pace appropriate to the setting, allowing Peter Grant's narrative voice, his observations of and interactions with the town, and with the emerging evidence of the fantastic that lies beneath, provide the book's rhythm and tempo.

Some of Aaronovitch's more impatient readers have grumbled that the Rivers story arc featuring the Faceless Man, the series' primary antagonist, gets little attention in this outing. Over at Tor.com Liz Bourke has gone so far as to dismiss Foxglove Summer as a 'placeholder novel', which it is certainly not.  Given that in Broken Homes Peter's fellow constable and apprentice Leslie May betrayed Peter, Nightingale and the Metropolitan Police, joining the Faceless Man on the ethically challenged side of both magic and the law, they can be forgiven for feeling a bit let down.  However, anyone paying attention to the pacing of the Rivers series to date will have expected the sound and fury of the Faceless subplot to recede to the background in Foxglove Summer.

Aaronovitch tends to avoid spending his story's dramatic tension all at once. He leaves the Faceless Man subplot largely behind periodically, knowing the reader will be all the hungrier for it when he returns.  However, to call Foxglove Summer a mere placeholder is to imply that its central story is throw-away and that the book contributes nothing of value to the larger story arc, neither of which is the case.  Foxglove merely changes the larger story's tempo, creating a bit of narrative elbow room before foreshadowing the storm to come.    

By doing so, Aaronovitch allows himself the space and literary tempo needed to extend Peter Grant's character at something less than a gallop.  It also allows the author to develop Beverly Brook, who has been consigned to cameo appearances since her introduction in Rivers of London, and to give their heretofore slow-approach relationship room to breathe and unfold naturally.  He uses Foxglove to expand the back-story of Molly, Nightingale's otherworldly housekeeper, of Ettenberg where the flower of English wizardry was broken, and to hint at what is walled away in the basement of the Folly behind sheets of battleship steel.  And we learn that that the Genius Loci of the rivers of London are reaching out and establishing their own entente with their peers in the countryside.

Foxglove Summer is worth your hard-earned shekels, and I recommend it.  Fans of the Aaronovitch's earlier works will enjoy it (provided they can school themselves to patience) and readers who wish make Peter Grant's acquaintance without reading the series from its beginning will find Foxglove a good place to jump in.

Alas for our American readers, while released in the UK in November, Foxglove Summer will not be sold by US retailers until January. The Infinite Reach will reference this review again when the book is released in the US, lest you forget.

Book Review: Skin Game, by Jim Butcher

Reviewed by J.D. Popham

Skin Game, the fifteenth entry in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, will be a pleasing read for most of Mr. Butcher's dedicated fan base.   Indeed, a week having passed since Skin Game's release, most of said fan base have already bought the book, read the book and pronounced the book a triumph.  Mind, some were pronouncing Skin Game a triumph before it arrived on their doorstep or in their e-reader.  All of which is as it should be; the reason why we call them dedicated fans and true believers.   

This review is not for them.

I encountered Harry Dresden for the first time in New York City's Penn Station, where I picked up a copy of Summer Knight (book number four) for the train ride back to DC.  Summer Knight is a clean, well balanced story about how a down-on-his luck gumshoe/wizard, punching well out of his metaphysical weight class, solves a  murder mystery and thereby saves Chicago from a supernatural war and himself from execution by his superiors on the White Council of wizards. Having reread the series last year, I still regard Summer Knight as the best written book in the Dresden Files series. 

As the series has moved onward through its next eleven iterations, Mr Butcher has managed to maintain the essence of the Dresden Files zeitgeist with a larger series story arc informed by events unfolding in each stand-alone episode. In each book Butcher has upped the ante, with Harry Dresden accruing power and allies but, in keeping with his role as underdog, always finding himself confronted by enemies more formidable than himself and battling against long odds.  Along the way Butcher has developed a compelling cast of supporting characters, many of whom are as popular with his fan base as Harry Dresden himself.

However, with Skin Game, this pattern is beginning to become unwieldy.

Skin Game is, in essence, a heist story in which Harry Dresden is required to collaborate with Nicodemus Archeleone; arch villain, host to a fallen angel and arguably the most formidable of Harry Dresden's enemies. Nicodemus made his first appearance in Death Masks, the book that followed Summer Knight, and immediately proved his Evil Overlord bone-fides.  He is a fan favorite in the Dresden pantheon of bad-guys, and the prospect of Harry having to assist Nicodemus in planning and executing an Oceans' Eleven style robbery of a Greek god's metaphysical valuables vault has had Dresden's followers all a-buzz.

Harry is compelled to assist Nicodemus by Mab, faerie queen of air and darkness.  This is due to Harry having taken the job as Winter Knight, chief enforcer for Mab.  That and the fact that there is something in Harry's head that will burst out in a few day, killing him and very likely those he cares about, if he doesn't complete the job in time. Nicodemus, of course, intends to kill Harry before the festivities conclude. Harry knows this.  Nicodemus knows Harry knows this.  Harry knows Nicodemus knows Harry knows this, and so on.  So, all the elements are in play for a merry romp.  And it is a well executed romp for the most part.

Typically a Dresden Files book includes multiple threats and plot threads that Harry has to deal with, each creating complications for the others. For example, in Death Masks, Harry has to deal with Nicodemus' plot to set a plague loose in Chicago, arrange and fight a duel with a vampire nobleman, and find the recently stolen Shroud of Turin.  The result in Butcher's hands is usually a story that unfolds at breakneck pace, with many plot-element balls in the air and plates spinning perilously a-wobble, until the reader is finally allowed to draw breath as the story comes to its close.  Of late, however, Mr. Butcher has had to limit the number of competing plot lines.  In Skin Game, he is reduced pretty much to one. The series has lost its early lightness of foot over time and, though Butcher takes care to keep Harry's snark and banter undimmed, the current book lacks much of the series' trademark velocity and agility.  Skin Game takes flight whenever we are dealing with the heist, but it frequently gets bogged down in explication and fan service.

Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Warden of Demonreach and Winter Knight is struggling against the weight of his own back-story.

The Dresden Files appears to be suffering from a case of Series Bloat. That it has taken fifteen books for this to become evident speaks well to the care Butcher has taken in writing The Dresden Files to date. In Changes, the eleventh book in the series, Butcher pruned back some of the growing underbrush of characters, setting and subplots in order to create room for Harry's development as Mab's Winter Knight. However, Mr. Butcher is something of a character hoarder and in the three books following Changes the back-story underbrush has grown as thick and tangled as before. Skin Game alone introduces at least four new characters from whom I expect return appearances, and several return appearances from characters I'd hoped not to see again.

Then there's the Superman conundrum.  As Harry becomes more and more powerful, so must his enemies.  As both Harry and his enemies become more powerful, his friends and allies as written in the early books are correspondingly weaker by comparison. For example, the rough and tough pack of werewolves who are invaluable to Harry in book four are, by book fourteen, relatively useless as allies, being more or less as vulnerable to the forces at play as the hapless humans Harry must protect.  To offset this, Butcher has resorted to 'power-ups' to keep fan-favorite characters relevant to the action and in play.  Two such power-ups occur is Skin Game, and to me both came off as rather shameless dies ex machina plot devices disguised as fan service.

Further, as Harry becomes more powerful, it's becoming harder and harder for Butcher to credibly impede his hero when the plot requires it.  Despite all Harry's accrued power, Butcher persists in allowing Harry to be stymied by foes who should no longer be a credible threat to him. Despite the accompanying explication, Butcher is unconvincing more often than not in such cases.  Indeed, Butcher devotes a good part of Skin Game to dialing back Harry's Winter Knight powers somewhat in order to make the character more manageable.  Suddenly they are revealed to be much more limited than the readers were once led to believe; the Winter Knight's potency or lack thereof subject to the immediate needs of the narrative.  The result is a Harry Dresden only marginally more powerful than he was before he compromised his basic principles in order to take up the mantle of Winter Knight.

Such writing, while convenient for the author, detracts from Skin Game.

Still for all of that, Dresden Files fans will (and do) find a lot to like here.  While the book doesn't move as deftly as it ought to and the plot device machinery tends to clank and clunk, the essence of Harry Dresden and company still comes through.  For those new to The Dresden Files, Skin Game is not the book with which to begin and I would recommend starting early in the series, when Chicago was a simpler place.

The lives of Harry Dresden and the inhabitants of his Chicago have become, as Harry would say, complicated.

Book Review: Broken Homes

Review by J. D. Popham

Broken Homes, the fourth in the Rivers of London (AKA Peter Grant) series by Ben Aaronovitch, has all the hallmarks of a ‘reset’ novel.  

If you haven’t noticed, the modern genre fiction market is obsessed with series.  It’s no longer enough to write a good Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. Part of the pitch to an agent or publisher has to be the novel’s potential as a series. 

A one-off success is nice, to be sure, but after its initial blush of financial success it will rapidly fade from a revenue standpoint. A series, on the other hand, is the gift that keeps on giving.  The audience that loved the first book will likely return to buy the second. And then the third, and so on. Readers who discover the series mid-run are likely to go back and buy the earlier installments, boosting sales of the author's back-list. So, the next installment of a successful series is much lower risk proposition for the publisher than a completely new story, and is a cheerfully reliable income stream for the author.  

Consequently, it’s not unusual to see a stand-alone first novel subtitled: ‘Book one in the [insert franchise name here] series’, and left with major plot threads dangling for the folow-on book in the series to take up. 

 

Happily, in Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the US, as Rivers of London was apparently thought too gentle a title for adrenalin-addled American sensibilities), Ben Aaronovitch delivered a novel that stands easily on its own, managing to avoid the look and feel of a series set-up.  Rivers introduced us to newly minted Police Constable Peter Grant, and follows his first encounters with the ghosts, mystical creatures and Newtonian magics that exist just beyond the public's sight in contemporary London.  In London, of course, even things that go bump in the night are subject to the Queen’s peace, and the Metropolitan Police has the job of dealing with breaches of said peace; even when they involve malevolent spirits and river goddesses.  What follows is an excellent bash-up of Urban Fantasy and police procedural, populated by an engaging cast of well-drawn characters. 

Aaronovitch followed  Rivers of London with Moon over Soho, and  Whispers Under Gound, each of which was as witty as the first, deftly fleshing out and extending Aaronovitch's characters and the London they inhabit, while introducing the reader to London’s jazz vampires, ‘ethically challenged’ wizards, subterranean ‘quiet folk’, goblin markets, demon traps, and a pale lady with a …discomforting MO for murder. 

Broken Homes features the return of the Faceless Man, an evil (or ethically challenged, as Peter Grant would say) wizard introduced in Moon Over Soho. The Faceless Man is, at least for the moment, the series' primary antagonist, though his appearance in Soho is brief and he exists primarily as an undercurrent in Whispers. In Broken Homes he's back and hatching ethically challenged plans that, as the plot thickens, seem to center around Highgarden Estate.  Highgarden, an eccentric high-rise designed by an even more eccentric German architect, and possibly incorporating the principles of industrial scale magic, may be housing more than a colorful collection of aging protesters and low-income cranks.

Broken Homes lacks the easy charm of the first three books in the Rivers of London series.  It has a somewhat distracted quality, the story never quite able to get its footing and momentum until it builds toward its climax.  Each of the previous books has revolved around the revealing of a new facet of London's mystical underground; The genius loci of Rivers, the jazz vampires of Soho, and the quiet folk of Whispers.  In Broken Homes Aaronovitch stands pat with the status quo, allowing the search for the Faceless Man to be the focus of the story and otherwise occupying himself with re-arranging the exiting furniture and adding a few new pieces. 

Aaronovitch introduces us to a number of new characters who seem peripheral for Broken Homes, but I assume will play a larger role going forward. Peter Grant and his Sierra Leonean mother abruptly begin speaking Krio with each other, with no hint given as to why they've never done so in any of the previous books. A nurse from Whispers is promoted in Homes from a bland secondary character to a lead role as the dynamic and exceedingly dangerous Varvara Sidorovna, a Russian witch and magical assassin. The book's most significant change would amount to a spoiler and so cannot be mentioned here. Suffice it to say that we leave Broken Homes with the field of play very much changed and 'To Be Continued' writ large in the skies over Perter Grant's London.

I suspect this is due, at least in part, to the fourth book having to pull double duty.  Homes must attend to its own story while laying groundwork for future books and resetting certain aspects of the Rivers of London series back-story.  I would venture this is occurring for the happy reason that Aaronovitch didn't anticipate how successful the Peter Grant series would be.  With Rivers apparently settling in for a long run, Aaronovitch likely needed to make changes in order to avoid being boxed in by the series' first three books.  In such cases sooner is better than later and, with this housekeeping complete, I look forward to a return to form in Aaronovitch's next book.

This is not to say that Broken Homes isn't worth the readers time and money.  While it doesn't cohere as well as its predecessors it is an entertaining read. However, it is not a good introduction to Peter Grant and the denizens of his London.  It does not stand on its own as did its predecessors, and those unfamiliar with the series will want to introduce themselves through its earlier books. Which, as homework assignments go, is a very pleasant one. PC Grant and company are acquaintances well worth making.

Urban Sprawl

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." 
      - Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

How do you define Urban Fantasy? 

Now before you answer, a couple of ground rules: We are talking Urban Fantasy as a literary sub-genre, not Urban Fantasy as a marketing niche.  Also, be mindful that I do not regard Wikipedia as an authoritative source. 

At first glance it seems very straight-forward.  Urban.  Fantasy.  A work of Fantasy that takes place in an urban setting. We're done here. Right?

Alas, it appears not. 

At risk of being called an East coast snob, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Bon Temps, Louisiana is not an urban center.  In fact, I think it's fair to say the regulars down at Merlotte's Bar and Grill would take umbrage if I were to question their 'just folks' bayou bone-fides. What with Bon Temp being the setting for Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries, said umbrage would be exceedingly hazardous to my health.  So, with all due deference to the fans of Charlaine Harris, one could say that Southern Vampire Mysteries fails the most basic test of Urban Fantasy.

By the same token, Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer resides in Sunnydale, a small town on the California coast. While Sunnydale does sit atop a supernatural nexus that gives it a surprisingly high creature to human ratio, it's decidedly non-urban. Now, it would be fair to point out that the movie of the same name was set in Los Angeles. However, true Buffyphiles hold that the movie is non canonical and not part of the Buffyverse, having been disavowed by Joss Wheadon for the many departures it took from his original story and the framing of his characters.  While I am as brave as any man, I don't mess with the Buffyphiles, and must disallow Buffy the movie as an argument for Buffy's urban fantasy credentials.

However, despite their lack of what would seem to be a requisite urban setting, both Southern Vampire Mysteries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are cited as examples of Urban Fantasy.

Buffy and Sookey are only the more prominent examples of what I regard as an unfortunate bloat in the sub-genre's definition.  Largely for marketing reasons, Urban Fantasy has become a catch-all category. Almost anything that is not categorized as 'High' or 'Epic' fantasy appears to have been stuffed into the Urban Fantasy box.

As a result, 'What is Urban Fantasy?' is becoming a question with no wrong answer.

Over at The Creative Penn, British author Joanna Penn defends this excessively broad definition:

"Urban fantasy has been defined by the places in which the fantasy (magic and or strange creatures, usually) is set – i.e. the urban environment. It gives flexibility in terms of the time period; the city could be in the Victorian, Tudor, post-American civil war – whenever.  As long as the fantasy is rooted in the city, it’s urban fantasy.

Whilst I can see the sense of this, I don’t like to chain what I consider to be urban fantasy to being set in densely populated cities."

Now, while I respect Ms. Penn's desire for creative latitude, this is little more than Humpty Dumpty reasoning.  It's rather like saying one doesn't like to chain what one considers to be vegetarian cook-books to collections of recipes that don't include meats.  

Ms. Penn goes on to provide her more inclusive definition of Urban Fantasy as:

 [M]agic and weird stuff creeping in at the edges of a world in which magic is not the norm.

I like this definition. It has elegance. It is spare, clear and concise. Unfortunately, it is the precise definition of Low Fantasy ('Low' not denoting of quality, but of the sub-genre's contrasting relationship with 'High' Fantasy which occurs in worlds such as Earthsea or Middle Earth where magic and 'weird stuff' are the norm) and not that of Urban Fantasy.

While Urban Fantasy fits within the broader definition of Low Fantasy, the relationship does not flow both ways. Much of Low Fantasy is not urban. The same is true of Contemporary Fantasy if we restrict our definition to Fantasy works set in the here and now.  While the majority of Urban Fantasy works are contemporary in their setting, a work of Contemporary Fantasy in which the urban environs play no part cannot reasonably be called Urban Fantasy.

Why then such unreason?  Why have seemingly rational people like Ms. Penn, who no doubt expect their ham and cheese omelets to contain both ham and cheese, their Bordeaux wine to come from Bordeaux, and their romantic comedies to at least take a stab at both romance and comedy suddenly gone fifty shades of Humpty Dumpty on us when it comes to Urban Fantasy?

I suspect it comes down to money and street cred.

Urban Fantasy has the benefit of sounding kind of cool. When asked what one writes, answering 'Urban Fantasy' has a sort of gritty elan to it.  It's as though you get to snap up the collar of your trench coat and draw down the brim of your fedora as you say in a low and mysterious voice, "Me? I write Urban Fantasy,".  Contemporary Fantasy, on the other hand, sounds somewhat less dramatic; more like a line of sofas at Crate and Barrel than a happening literary niche. 

And of course, that whole 'cool' vibe is just cat-nip for marketing weasels, which is why you see publishing houses pushing as Urban Fantasy scores of titles that aren't vaguely urban, and are all too often Paranormal Romances attempting to cash in on Urban Fantasy's cache'.  If that means the Urban Fantasy moniker is diluted to the point of meaninglessness, it's no never-mind to the hucksters as long as the cash registers keep ringing.  When they stop ringing, after all, the hucksters can simply move on and never mind the mess they've left behind.

If there is no wrong answer when someone asks what Urban Fantasy is, then there is no right answer either.  However convenient and inclusive it may be in the short term, a sub-genre without boundaries has no future.

At the end of the day, words that mean whatever we choose them to mean have no meaning at all.  

- J. D. Popham