Monday, June 1, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 23, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Angel of the Crows is the second* novel from Katherine Addison, the author of the Hugo and Nebula award nominated The Goblin Emperor.  The Goblin Emperor was one of the biggest critical darlings (and fan enjoyed) books in the last few years, and even if I didn't quite love it as much as the general consensus, it was a masterpiece of setting and character-building.  So people have been waiting for Addison's next novel for some time and finally with The Angel of the Crows, we have it.  To add to the reasons this book is highly anticipated, it's another fantasy adaptation of Holmes and Watson, and seeing Addison put a spin on that is highly appealing.

*Addison is actually the pen name for author Sarah Monette, but this is the second novel for this pen name.  

 And The Angel of the Crows mostly delivers.  Once again Addison pulls of a fantastic setting - a fantasy version of London filled with Angels, Vampires, Werewolves, and more - and main characters that are a hell of a different spin on classical archetypes.  This Holmes is an Angel - albeit one who shouldn't be able to exist and is not trusted as a result - and our Watson is carrying very different secrets and traumas (which I'm not going to spoil here) than the original. These changes, plus the fantastic setting, draw you in and make this a hard book to put down (I literally finished this at 2 in the morning.)  On the other hand, despite all the above, the book is at the same time often somehow also a by the numbers adaptation of a number of classic Holmes stories which will be of less interest to anyone with major familiarity with those stories.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Dr. J.H. Doyle never had any intention of returning to London, but Doyle's tour in Afghanistan was cut short when Doyle was injured by a Fallen and barely survived due to an experimental treatment.  Doyle has nowhere to stay but a chance acquaintance introduces Doyle to a solution: an Angel named Crow is looking for a roommate for a flat on Baker Street.  Crow is like no angel Doyle has ever met - Crow clearly isn't fallen, but he's not tied to any specific location like every other non-nameless angel Doyle has met....and Crow clearly has a name.  Even worse, Crow probably can sense Doyle's own dangerous secrets.

But Doyle can't help but be intrigued by Crow's brilliant deductions from sharp observation and even more so by Crow's unusual relationship with Scotland Yard.  Soon Doyle is accompanying Crow on cases, and finding out how strange murders and mysteries in London and its surrounding area can truly be.  With Doyle's Assistance, they take on these cases - which feature all manners of supernatural creatures: such as vampires, hemophages, werewolves, hellhounds, etc.  Many such creatures live ordinary legal lives in London - but they don' make solving these mysteries any less dangerous.

But then there's London's most dangerous killer - the unknown assailant who has been cutting up prostitutes and leaving no clues in the process.....can Crow and Doyle stop him before his murder spree continues?  Or will all of London remain in utter fear forever?
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The Angel of the Crows is a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, with the angel Crow as our version of Holmes and Dr. Doyle standing in for Dr. Watson.  It's not particularly subtle about that, with Doyle's  backstory of being injured in Afghanistan being lifted straight from Watson's for example, but what makes this novel different than just a straight adaptation is the change in setting.  This is a fantasy version of London where supernatural creatures are regular beings, although those who are them are supposed to register their status with the law.  So you have angels - both the thinking type who are tied to a location and a mindless unthinking type who go everywhere without personality - fallen angels, hellhounds, vampires, hemophages, werewolves, etc.  It's a really well done fantasy setting, which we see through Doyle's eyes throughout (again just like in classic Holmes stories told by Watson) that makes fresh something which may otherwise feel old hat and done before.

That said, despite the above, this is sometimes a really paint by numbers adaptation of Holmes and Watson, with each part of the book covering for the most part - with a few exceptions - a classic story from the original works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Addison changes some motivations, adds some supernatural elements to most of the stories, and deals with the problematic nature of a few of the stories (a convenient race flip helps one of these), but the names of all the players in each story remain the same, as do the general particulars.  As some of these stories are longer than others, this works better sometimes than others - the longer stories have more room for interesting changes, but shorter stories, especially a few that close out the book, often feel kind of pointless and wasted: especially if you have any familiarity with the original stories....as the whodunit nature of them is basically eliminated by the fact that the culprits all remain exactly the same.  The adaptation of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is a good example of this, as the story pretty much cuts out the mystery altogether by having it solved immediately, making me wonder why on earth it was included as such.  Moreover, even the book's only non-Holmesian mystery, based upon the killings of Jack the Ripper, isn't resolved in a fashion that satisfies anyone with a craving for mystery, and functions more as a window dressing of the setting more than anything.  Really the stories here no longer function as mysteries intended to puzzle the reader but instead as setting pieces for our characters to grow and develop.

And as a result, The Angel of the Crows really works, thanks to its tremendous main duo - its adaptation of Sherlock (as Crow) and Watson (as Doyle).  It's become classic in mainstream adaptations of Holmes to adapt the man as an utter jerk, with some adaptations going so far as to have him deliberately being an asshole to others while others simply make it a result of him lacking any social awareness or dignity.  Here, that's very toned down and explained:  Crow (Holmes) is literally an angel, obviously most interested in doing good, and never wanting to be a jerk.....he just has little awareness of human social dignities, emotions and functions outside of what he can observe, which as a non-human is obviously incomplete and thus requires a lot of aid from Doyle.  That's added to by the strange circumstances for which Crow exists as an Angel, which is fascinatingly revealed throughout.

And then there's Doyle, who is honestly perhaps more of the primary character here as the Watson surrogate than Crow is as the Holmes one.  Doyle is a tremendous lead narrator, a character with secrets that intrigue and yet feel natural and explicable when finally revealed - despite Doyle's first person narration, it never feels conspicuous or ludicrous when these secrets come out that they weren't first in Doyle's own internal monologue.  These secrets and changes to the Watson background make Doyle a fresh and really interesting character, as Doyle grows to accept who Doyle has become, and grows a relationship with Crow.  In the end of it all, even if the mysteries themselves were kind of a bummer, I really desperately wanted to see more of what would happen to both Doyle and Crow.

I'm tiptoeing around character spoilers throughout this review, not even giving them up in ROT13, because this book is done so well in using them to grow the characters like Doyle, and I wouldn't want to possibly ruin anything for any reader.  And I should add that the book does do interesting things confronting issues of race and gender throughout, even with the limited number of women in the classic Holmes stories, the most notable of whom actually does not appear in this novel.  The result is overall a tremendous follow up to The Goblin Emperor, featuring a fascinating setting in this fantasy version of London, and two tremendous characters in Crow and Doyle.

This novel ends in a way that is satisfying on its own, but honestly makes me desperate for more, and if more does come in this world, I'll be there immediately. 

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