The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman
The Invisible Library series of novels are good fun, imaginative and entertaining. The heroine, Irene, is a librarian at the mysterious Invisible Library (it isn't really invisible, just kind of metaphorically invisible, like Pratchett's Unseen University) - this means she is young, attractive, adventurous, brave, able to fight, intelligent, ingenious and can do magic by using The Language.
In previous books in the series (this is the eighth and most recent), she has had various adventures, some amusing, some tense, some scary, and has amassed a small group of loyal friends who help her in her ongoing quests: a Sherlock Holmesian Victorian detective, a dragon in human form (who is also her lover), a fae apprentice. There are also recurring characters such as the fae libertine-archetype, Lord Silver, or her dragon-lover's narrow-minded brother Shan Yuan. One of these characters is the ongoing villain Alberich who was revealed to be Irene's real father in the previous book (sorry for the spoiler), and his story is important in this most recent episode in the series.
So, what was the book like? Well, I enjoyed it overall, though as always there was an awful lot of expositionary dialogue, which is true of most stories where lots of explanation is required. It's all very well advising writers to 'show not tell', but you just can't show everything unless you want a book as long as the Encyclopedia Britannica. There has to be those scenes where the main characters get together and discuss what is happening, come up with potential explanations and make plans. There also have to be long passages relaying Irene's inner thoughts (though these do get a tad repetitive, I feel), if only to explain why she makes the decisions she makes. Having said this, the set-piece action sequences are excellent and the plots twist and turn in a generally satisfactory way. I found myself a bit lost here and there, but this is because there is quite a long stretch of time between the books being published and my aging brain can't remember the details from earlier instalments, but I can't be bothered to re-read them all.
I thought this book was good and I enjoyed reading it. It brings the overall story to a kind of conclusion, so Cogman could leave it at this point if she wished, though there are enough loose ends to attach further stories to if she wanted to do so. I wonder whether the series has run its course and whether it will start to become tediously repetitive if it does continue, however. I notice that Cogman's next novel, not yet available, is called 'Scarlet' and is what looks like the start of a new series based loosely on the Scarlet Pimpernel stories but involving vampires, so maybe she has moved on - I think this is probably a wise decision. Nevertheless, the Invisible Library series is definitely one to recommend to those of you who enjoy lively fantasy, imaginative world-creation, interesting characters, and something quite compelling when you feel like relaxing and recharging.
Rating: *** [definitely worth a read if you like this sort of thing]
The Shadow Wing by Sarah Painter
This is the sixth book in Painter's excellent series about Lydia Crow, private detective and now head of the powerful Crow family. If you like Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London novels, this series will appeal to you as it is set in London and has the same vivid sense of the city's streets and locations.
Lydia is a fascinating central character, not always likeable but nevertheless sympathetic, and the novels have an array of compelling secondary characters such as her ghostly house-mate, her sexy police officer boyfriend who might have his own kind of magic, her 'civilian' best friend, her psychotic and incredibly powerful cousin (who is a crucial figure in this particular novel and is genuinely terrifying).
I think Sarah Painter is an excellent writer - the novels are highly imaginative and appropriately paced, though they do tend to take a while to get going despite her use of striking opening scenes. The dialogue is authentic, the use of magic feels convincing, and the contemporary characters and setting are well-used. Painter's idea of the four magical families (Crows, Foxes, Pearls and Silvers) acting as a kind of checks and balances system for each other is an excellent one, and Lydia's ongoing attempts to unite the families and prevent the worst excesses of their most dangerous members provides an interesting overarching storyline.
Painter includes a lot of hints about longer plot lines that extend beyond each individual novel, and sometimes this detracts slightly from the satisfaction of reading each separate story. Fulfilling the competing reader requirements of a satisfying story within each novel and the larger plot that binds the novels together is a very difficult balancing act for writers of such series to pull off, and overall I would say that Painter does this pretty well. Setting the stories in modern-day London gives them an edge over Cogman's Invisible Library series, I think, as it gives them an air of reality and genuine jeopardy. Lydia's experiences are more edgy, gritty and frightening than Irene's, but I imagine the two women would get along with each other very well!
Rating: **** [High end genre-fiction]
I have come to this series rather late as Taylor has written three or four novels set in the Time Police so far. I am not a Taylor novice, however, as I read many of the instalments in her series about St Mary's, the time-travelling historians, some years ago. The Time Police series is a spin-off from those books, but can be read without reading the St Mary's novels. However, if you enjoy the Time Police books, you will almost certainly want to read the St Mary's books too.
I enjoyed the St Mary's books but I abandoned them at a point where I felt the stories were getting a bit confusing and complicated. Essentially, they are novels about a group of academics who use time-travel to go back to pivotal historical events and check on things. I am sure that it is explained in this series why they don't simply go back repeatedly to put right the many things they manage to bugger up, and various other time-travel paradoxes, but I can't remember the details. As with Dr Who, I suspect this aspect is simply brushed under the table so we don't think about it too much.
The thing about the novels that has made them so popular is their humour. They are often laugh-out-loud funny, though they do have some boring passages. In this particular novel, there is a stretch about the arrival of a fourth team member that seems firstly highly implausible and secondly is skimmed over in a way that earlier parts of the story aren't - there is a great deal of telling rather than showing in this section - and I found this a bit irritating.
Nevertheless, the historical angle is surprisingly compelling. I assume Taylor does quite a lot of research and I have actually learned things about historical events from the novels. One sequence that stays with me from the St Mary's books is the trip to Troy which taught me more about the semi-mythical battle than the much more academically-sound Natalie Haynes's book, which I read last year, did.
The tension between St Mary's and the Time Police has been an ongoing theme throughout the St Mary's chronicles, so it is engaging to have a series which shows us this world from the Time Police's viewpoint. Taking three new recruits (all misfits for one reason or another) as their focus, this new series contains all the humour and character-interaction of the St Mary's stories. I enjoyed reading this first instalment, though I did find some of it a little dull. Taylor is a good writer who has honed her craft throughout the entire series and there is a competence and professionalism about the novels that is admirable, but I think that the endless repetition of essentially the same idea - modern day people visiting times in the past in order to put things right and often messing it up in the process - will almost certainly become tedious and I will probably end up abandoning this series too. Nevertheless, I have to say that, if you enjoy comic fantasy, the books are readable, lively and entertaining.
Rating: *** [definitely worth a read if you like this sort of thing]
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