The Midnight Mayor
Kate Griffin
2010
Reviewed by Carol
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
A solid urban fantasy read.
The second installment of the Matthew Swift series, The Midnight Mayor
continues to follow recently reincarnated Matthew Swift and the
co-inhabitants of his body, the electric angels. Once again, Matthew
regains consciousness near a public phone, lying in the ground in the
dark and the rain; cold, burned, and bloody. As he tries to orient
himself, hooded faceless spectres start to stalk him. He manages to
escape after some clever displays of sorcery and goes to find the
Whites, the graffiti magicians, for healing. Vera, as enigmatic as
always, gets him fixed up with Dr. Seah. Dr. Seah has questions about
his injuries: “Now, while every case is,
like, unique, I gotta tell you, electrocution by telephone leading to
the appearance of a cross carved in the palm of the victim’s hand is
unusual even for central London. You seriously have no idea how it got
there?“
In the midst of recovery, The Alderman
intrude. Much like conventional politicians, the Alderman (and women)
are largely concerned with managing the magical influences of the city
for London’s greater good. Unfortunately, they have their suspicions
about Matthew’s role in the recent murder of the Midnight Mayor, the
head of the Alders, and it’s mutual antipathy from the start: “The
Alderman who’d spoken was young, male, and destined to rule the world.
He had dark blond hair, slightly curled, a face just bordering on deeply
tanned, bright blue eyes, a hint of freckle and a set of teeth you
could have carved a piano with. If I hated the Aldermen on basic
principle, I hated him on direct observation.“
Mayhem ensues, and before long, Matthew
is roped into solving the mystery of the systematic destruction of
London’s magical protectors. The religious fundamentalist Oda is once
again assigned to Matthew, and this time there are resources from the
Aldermen. There’s also a missing teenage boy who Matthew is determined
to find.
**********************
The plot moves relatively quickly, but
as a sorcerer who is connected to the magic of the city, events are
often broken up or transitioned through long descriptive passages about
the city. At times it worked, and at other times, less so. Although some
scenes created the feel of London to a non-Londoner, some were so
focused on observing the surroundings that they didn’t quite have a
sense of weighty history, nor the bemused sensory experience of the
angels. There’s a definite moral ambiguity to many aspects of the
storyline, and I find that it was one of the aspects I enjoyed about the
book–there wasn’t necessarily facile answers, and that achievement of
the goals comes with costs. I enjoyed the complexity of the plotting–a
lot of questions are raised in the search for answers, much like real
life. Are the angels benign? Is the Alders’ goal of protecting the City
of London at the expense of the people worthwhile? Is there such a thing
as a selfless motive?
Magical elements continue to be
fascinating, from London’s warding magic traditions, to magic linked to
the city at time of day, to more modern incarnations of evil, such as
the ‘saturate,’ a giant fatty blob no doubt based on a recent story. I continue to enjoy the fascinating magic of the Whites–”it
was realised that the image of a great eye painted at the end of
Platform 14… was a scrying tool of infinitely more value than your
traditional bowl of silver water, and that nothing bound as effectively
as a double red parking line burnt chemically into the earth“–and
the magic surrounding a pair of shoes was inventive and yet logical.
The updated three hags was also a fun twist on a fairly common myth.
Narrative style has changed slightly
from the first book. I remain fond of Swift’s voice. For those who might
have been bothered by the poetic deconstruction in the first, the
second book is far more coherent, with Swift and the angels gradually
assuming more of a uniform identity, and structure largely in paragraph
form, complete sentences and all.
Characterization remains a strong point,
and I felt there were enough support for the side characters that they
obtained individuality. I was impressed by how much Griffin was able to
imply about the former Midnight Mayor from the contents of his pockets.
Dr. Seah remains one of my favorites with her slightly impaired bedside
manner (“Dr. Seah knew the sound of a
refusal when she heard one, and knew that the only way to get round
these things, was to ignore them before they could become admissible in
court”), along with the ghostly nurse of the (almost) abandoned NHS hospital.
There’s definitely a fair amount of
humor in the book, which helps lighten the fairly significant
consequences. Griffin does a nice job of not allowing humor to
overshadow the action or to sacrifice character for the quip. The humor
is often subtle or slightly skew:
“‘A large number of people, I suspect. But they wouldn’t know what to make of it.’
‘Anyone… of alternative inclining?
‘I’m guessing you’re not referring to sex, biology or morals?‘”
“I looked him up and down. He seemed like a principled man, the last thing I needed to see.”
I enjoyed it a great deal, and have many
more scribbled page numbers with quotes to prove it. I’ll have to
settle for adding it to my library and re-reading at leisure.
cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/the-midnight-mayor-by-kate-griffin/