Catherine Webb

Sam Linnifer — (2003-2004) Publisher: Sam Linnfer works part time at a London University. He's a quiet chap. A few friends here and there. A real skill for ancient languages. And an affection for cats. He's also immortal and the Son of Time. You might know him better as Lucifer, Old Nick, or the Devil . And with all the Gods in Heaven about to go to war over ownership of Earth, you're going to be extremely glad he's not exactly the person history portrays him to be.

As Kate Griffin

Matthew Swift — (2009-2011) Publisher: For Matthew Swift, today is not like any other day. It is the day on which he returns to life. Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home. Except that it's no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable... despite his body never being found. He doesn't have long to mull over his resurrection though, or the changes that have been wrought upon him. His only concern now is vengeance. Vengeance upon his monstrous killer and vengeance upon the one who brought him back.

A Madness of Angels

I think maybe I love Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels. It’s a mature love, too, not just a crush, because I can see the faults in the thing and I love it anyway. It’s a hard book to write about without spoiling the fun for everyone, so instead of discussing the plot I will focus on what I loved.

I love Griffin’s view of magic. Reviewers compare A Madness of Angels to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and those comparisons are apt. This is a book, first and foremost, about London, a magical London that is as close to our London as the next bus kiosk, the Tube or that pigeon waddling toward you looking for a handout.

Matthew Swift was a sorcerer, able to harness the magic of the city in a holistic, intuitive way. Two years ago, Matthew was murdered. Now he’s back, and he’s not sure why. And he’s different. I don’t want to give away too much, but someone came back with him. Here is one more tidbit. Matthew used to have puppy-dog-brown eyes. Now they’re blue.

Griffin imagines magic as a current of power, fed by the energy of living things, all living things. Countrysides have their magic, the traditional elf-and-fey-folk magic of British folklore, but cities, especially old cities, are magical stockpiles. Matthew is an urban magician, dealing with the dazzling, churning, seductive and overwhelming power of London. Many sorcerers, we are told, succumb to the pulse of the city and become half-mad vagrants and wanderers, unable to tell if they are a human or a rat, or a crow, or the 9:15 train. And cities, like the ocean, like forests and caves, create their own mythology and their own pantheon of new gods — the Beggar King, the Bag Lady, the Midnight Mayor and even the Last Train on the Circle Line. This is where Griffin is most like Gaiman.

Griffin’s definition of “life” is fluid. Is light alive? Is music? Is fire? Is electricity? A thing with a purpose, when that purpose has been honored by thousands of people, can become an object of power for a sorcerer. One of the most charming things about Matthew is his respect for things: locks, trains and doors that have assumed power because of the integrity of their purpose. He also knows when to bring the metaphysical brass knuckles.

Before Matthew can figure out what or who brought him back, he has to face down a powerful enemy who is threatening all of London’s sorcerers. Matthew assembles a most unlikely group of allies. These are plausible characters from all walks of magical life, including the narrow-minded, viciously anti-magic Order. They don’t like each other, they don’t trust each other, but they will work together, because they are all being threatened.

The dialogue is crisp, perfectly timed, laugh-out-loud funny. Griffin’s descriptions are vivid, exquisite, gory, grotesque, poignant, sweet and quirky. I said this was a mature love, and that I saw the book’s flaws, and I will mention one now. She has a writing tic that forces her characters to “hiss” bits of dialogue, even bits that have no sibilants at all. “ ‘Go away,’ he hissed.” I began to develop an allergic reaction to the verb. At the end of the book, when a character actually “hissed, almost like a snake,” which would have been a great description, it just made me annoyed. “Said” works fine, Kate. Trust me. Better yet, trust yourself.

For reasons I can’t go into, voice is very important in this book, and Griffin manages this with the grace of a champion surfer on a twenty-foot wave.

A Madness of Angels is a long, well-plotted book, except for one loose end that is an annoying as getting that scrap of dental floss caught in your back teeth. The characters are convincing and memorable, the action sequences suspenseful, but what I take away from the book is Matthew’s — and Griffin’s — love for the magical soul of London. —Marion Deeds

A Madness of Angels

It seems to be public knowledge at this point that Kate Griffin is Catherine Webb, an author of several YA fantasy novels who has now made the leap into adult urban fantasy. A Madness of Angels is a difficult book to read and review in terms of its structure and point-of-view, for its uniqueness lies not in its story or character, but in the way in which this particular tale is told.

Matthew Swift awakens on his bedroom floor, naked and disoriented, only to find that two years have passed since he was last conscious, that his house is no longer his own, and that his (previously brown) eyes are now bright blue. He flees into the night, and his journey begins in the streets of London as he tries to piece together what exactly has happened to him.

To explain too many circumstances of the plot would be to defeat the entire point of the story, as the reader is purposefully thrown headfirst into Matthew's bizarre situation with very little idea of what's going on, why he refers to himself as "we,” what's chasing him, or what exactly he's trying to achieve. Is it confusing? Sure, but then Matthew is a very confused individual! Everything we experience is what Matthew himself experiences, due to the book's most distinctive storytelling feature: its tight perspective. The entire story is told from Matthew's point-of-view and all we get are his immediate experiences as he traverses London.

Gradually we gather bits and pieces of the mystery through Matthew's occasional reminiscences into the past, but this is a character that lives almost entirely in the present. In what is essentially a survival story and a quest for vengeance, the central plot not only deals with Matthew's resurrection into the world, but his attempts to traverse the opposing sides of a war that rages silently within London. On the one side are those that seek to eliminate magic-users, and on the other are magically-gifted individuals allied to the immensely powerful Tower, an organization run by Matthew's former mentor. Despite being a magician himself, Matthew has to turn to those that mistrust and fear him in order to achieve his goals.

As you might have already guessed, London itself is a prominent character in the story, fused with Griffin’s creative use of "urban magic." From the wealthy penthouses to the alleyways filled with homeless people, from the hum-drum of suburbia to the secret pockets of the supernatural hiding in the shadows, this is a London that is filled to the brim with life and magic, two concepts that are deliberately and continuously linked throughout the book. Described in vivid sensory terms, the fact that all of Matthew's power is based on the heartbeat of Londonreveals Griffin’s affection for the city.

As such, Griffin’s "world-building" when it comes to the rules and quirks of urban magic is a treat. Here is a world in which litter bugs are literal dangers, where power can be dragged out of electrical wiring, where graffiti can provide potent magical symbols, and the world can be glimpsed through the eyes of pigeons and rats. Amongst those that hold power in the city are the likes of the Beggar King and the Bag Lady, figures who act much like a Greek array of gods, each with their own distinctive powers, personality and responsibilities.

As a protagonist, Matthew displays a somewhat hapless exterior, with a wicked sense of humor and a sharp mind that is usually one step ahead of everyone else. Although the narrative is more or less trapped inside his head, there's certainly an interesting brain ticking away in there.

While the pacing can be a bit sluggish at times, and the premise is initially quite confusing, those that that stick with the story may find an intriguing story of mystery and unexpected magic. Ending on a note that promises sequels, A Madness of Angels is a challenging but intriguing read. —Rebecca Fisher

A Madness of Angels

A Madness of Angels is the story of Matthew Swift, a London sorcerer who finds himself resurrected on the floor of his bedroom, with no explanation, two years after his death. I thought Matthew Swift’s story had a lot of potential, but I found Kate Griffin’s style of prose to be simultaneously so obtuse and overly detailed that it detracted from the plot.

For example, early in the book there is an encounter with a monster (the Litterbug) which is supposed to be terrifying, but it’s weighed down by two pages of description of its appearance. This description takes twice as long to read as the incident would have taken to occur. This overly exhaustive writing style was rampant throughout A Madness of Angels. At least a dozen times in the first twenty pages I caught myself thinking, “Why are you telling me this?” There's just so much extraneous writing that the story is impossible to see underneath it.

Also, the point of view jumps back and forth between first person singular and first person plural, and this was confusing. Who is this “we?” Is the narrator possessed, or is he royalty? Unfortunately, I never got around to finding out. This, combined with dialog that makes the narrator sound like he is a Shakespearean actor,  was incredibly distracting.

If I find myself having an active internal monologue critiquing the dialog structure, then the plot has lost my attention. I don’t like books that think they can build tension by being vague and confusing. A good writer should be able to make you care about the plot without resorting to deliberate obfuscation. I think there is a good story in A Madness of Angels, but the prose is so bewildering that it turned off any desire to find it. —Ruth Arnell

The Midnight Mayor

I loved Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels.

I merely enjoyed the sequel, The Midnight Mayor.

This is not an uncommon experience to have with a sequel. I think part of the problem comes from the amount of time devoted to the first novel, when the writer had years to re-imagine, revise, reread and rethink; time to burnish that pivotal paragraph or really dig deep to capture that motivation, contrasted with the length of time allowed with Book Two of a multi-book contract. The Midnight Mayor seems to suffer from a lack of the deep and loving detail the reader saw in A Madness of Angels.

Some of the problem lies with the plot. The plot in Madness was unapologetically linear, but there was such an interesting world being developed, and such a fascinating set of characters being explored, that it didn’t really matter. There was a glitch or two, but the language and Griffin’s head-over-heels infatuation with her city made them bearable or at least forgivable.

The plot in The Midnight Mayor is also linear, without much in the way of twists or turns, although we do meet some interesting folks along the way. As urban archetypes go, the Mayor, unfortunately, is less interesting than The Bag Lady or The Beggar King. The book is much shorter than the debut, which probably made the publisher happy but highlights the difficulties here. Although the problems Matthews takes on seems like they should be more emotional, like the search for a woman’s lost son, there is less emotional conflict in Mayor. In Madness, Matthew is forced to confront his mentor, a man he respected and revered; a father-figure. There is no emotional relationship of similar closeness in Midnight Mayor.

Matthew seems to drift along, finding clues and getting bits of information without much work. Even in the opening sequence, there is less sense of strangeness, and the danger feels forced. The specters are not the frightening monsters Griffin hopes they will be. There is real danger here, though, in the character of Oda, an adversary-turned-reluctant-ally, and member of the fundamentalist anti-magic Order.

Griffin still indulges her playfulness with language, particularly in that somewhat contrived opening scene, where we are treated to this:

And there it was, right there on the edge; there was strangeness. And it went:

Chi chichi chi chichi chi chichi bumph bumph chi chichi chi chichi chi chichi bumph bumph. . . I couldn’t work out immediately what it was. We wanted a weapon.

Okay, that’s almost as good as William Shatner doing beat poetry. I admire Griffin’s willingness to play. I also like the use of graffiti as urban-tribal messaging.

Some things just have unfortunate resonances. The Death of Cities, one of the villains, evokes all too strongly Terry Pratchett’s Death of Rats, causing me to snicker each time this dire entity appears in the book. This is not the effect Griffin was going for. She has to take some of the blame, however, for not honoring the very magical correspondences she set up, brilliantly, in the first book. For example, the Death of Cities is a supernatural entity composed mostly of paper trash. This is a powerful image, but by Griffin’s own magical rules something about the character of paper should be involved in its defeat, and it is not. This is not the only time the book disappoints.

There are also moments of pure delight and magical wonder, just like in the first book: Matthew’s conversation with another of those strange urban foxes; a humorous and scary encounter in the city library; a late-night ramble where Matthew talks to the spirits of the dead, including his own, since he died once and returned.

Of course, with a book named The Midnight Mayor, one has to expect politics, but the series would benefit from fewer political manipulations and more of the sheer exuberance of Griffin’s magical city. Overall I enjoyed the book, and I will continue to read the series, but my passionate honeymoon with Matthew Swift is over. —Marion Deeds

The Neon Court

The Neon Court, Kate Griffin’s third Matthew Swift novel, starts out with high drama as Matthew, urban sorcerer and Midnight Mayor of London, abruptly materializes on the top floor of a burning building. Oda, a member of the fundamentalist, magic-hating Order, has used a summoning spell to bring him there. This is enough, in her belief system, to damn her soul. Oda is dying, or at least, she should be, since she has been stabbed through the heart and is weeping tears of blood, but she is still surprisingly animated, and she needs Matthew’s help, although he doesn’t understand what she is asking.

It takes Matthew’s magic to deliver them from the flaming tower, and then things really get bad. The Neon Court, the urban incarnation of the Realm of Faerie, has come to town to declare war on the Tribe, another group of magical practitioners. Parts of suburban London are disappearing, people are found dead bleeding from the eyes, and Matthew is pretty sure that the sun hasn’t come up in a very long time.

Stop a war, save London, and bring back the sun — Matthew must do all that while dealing with the distrust of the Aldermen, who are the palace guards of the Midnight Mayor. He must dodge the manipulations of Lady Neon and the psychological sabotage inflicted by the ghost of his former mentor, Robert Bakker. In his spare time he must find a girl dubbed “the chosen one,” and somehow free Oda from a terrifying possession.

In the “Plus” column, Matthew has his loyal and feisty apprentice Penny, his fusion with the blue electric angels, and his own quirky madness/genius when it comes to magic and London.

The Neon Court has all the things I love about the Swift books. Matthew’s escape from the burning building, the depiction of a place called Between the Cracks, and Fat Rat are little masterpieces of urban mythos. Griffin still allows Matthew to have moments of experience that read like poetry, and creates a clan that talks in text-speak. Then there are things that seem derivative. The Night Bus — wasn’t there one in The Prisoner of Azkaban?  The Tribe seems like a knock-off of China Miéville’s humano-mechanic hybrids; but where Miéville’s inventions emerge organically from the story, (in Kraken, I believed in a sentient tattoo), Neon Court’s feel forced. I almost think Griffin is commenting on Miéville some way, and I’m not getting the message.

It is the Neon Court itself that is the biggest let-down of the book for me. Having met the anarchic artist-wizards, the Whites, in the first book, I expected far more than a bunch of Fae Folk led by a bored and self-indulgent Faerie Princess. Griffin wants the court to be seen as shallow, and she succeeds, but then this means that they are... shallow, really, almost too trivial a problem for Matthew to have to deal with in the midst of everything else. I wish Griffin had unleashed her imagination on Lady Neon, instead of going for a safe, stereotypical belle dame sans merci.

The first third of the book dragged, but once Robert Bakker’s ghost appeared, things picked up. Although she falters with the court, Griffin nails the supernatural villain in this one, and Matthew’s solution — after many people die — has the right amount of emotional resonance.

And... a lot of people die. I think this is to show that these books are serious, that magic has consequences and isn’t make-believe. It also seems to mean that any strong woman who helps out Matthew won’t survive for more than two books, so I’m beginning to worry about Penny. Killing off characters is a tricky business. In both The Midnight Mayor and The Neon Court, Griffin gives us a book-specific character in whom we are somewhat invested, who dies. I’m not sure what purpose this serves, just as, in this book, I’m not sure what Matthew’s serious injury in the early part of the book truly serves. Killing off characters wholesale actually makes the action seem less meaningful and more like a video game. Again, a point of some kind is being made — life is magic, but everyone around Matthew dies — and I just don’t get it.

These issues nag at me but they don’t extinguish the pleasure of reading these books.

Matthew’s insight into the nature of the villain is a good pay-off; as is another interaction he has, late in the book, with the head of the Order. That scene is very emotionally satisfying. At times it seems that the office of Midnight Mayor is too restraining for Matthew. On the other hand, the world is in disarray, the old rules don’t apply, and you don’t know who you can trust. Keeping us safe from the things in the dark? Maybe a scruffy, snarky sorcerer whose blood sizzles blue with the energy of a million-billion telephone lines is just the guy for the job. —Marion Deeds