Book Review: Goblins (2012) by Philip Reeve

In the field of steampunk literature (Teen division), Philip Reeve rules with a brass and mahogany fist. His seven-volume Mortal Engines series is simply one of the best achievements in imaginative writing in the last few decades. With Goblins he's taking a crack at fantasy (Young Adult regiment), and if the result isn't likely to be as seminal as Mortal Engines, it's still head and shoulders above the usual standard of YA fantasy titles.

Goblins could be described as fan fiction in the sense that Reeve has taken a sideways look at Tolkien's Middle-Earth and decided that someone needs to write a humorous story from the the point of view of the goblins. Reeve's goblins are foul and fell creatures, but since they're raised from birth (hatched, actually) according to the maxim of spare the mallet, spoil the goblin, one could say that it's a case of nurture rather than nature that accounts for their anti-social behavior. The goblins live in Clovenstone, a massive and ruined city/fortress that was once ruled by the dreaded Lych Lord. They spend most of their time beating up on each other, with the occasional raid on human settlements to relieve the monotony. Skarper, a young goblin, learns to read, which makes him unique amongst goblins, but it also leads to him being catapulted off the battlements of Clovenstone after an unwise display of his literacy. He then meets Henwyn, a teenage boy and wannabe hero who's left home after an unfortunate cheesemaking accident. The two join up and experience more adventures than is good for their health.

While the landscape and architecture of Goblins has echoes of Tolkien, and it's style and comic tone has resounding echoes of Terry Pratchett, the wit and imagination is all Reeve. The world-building in Goblins is first rate. With a minimum of fuss and verbiage, Reeve is able to create a rich, interesting world peopled (creatured?) with cloud maidens, twiglings, boglins, and giants that get smaller as they get older. I compared Reeve to Pratchett in terms of humor but what both share is a distinctly British form of humor that revolves around the subversion of anything or anyone that seems overly proud, serious or powerful; the self-important and mighty typically find themselves humbled or embarrassed by common sense, the unavoidable facts of life, and bureaucratic inflexibility. Think of it as the revenge of middle-class values. It's a comic philosophy that seems in tune with thoroughly British concepts like "muddling through" and "the Dunkirk spirit." It's also the perfect form of humor for "a nation of shopkeepers."In contrast, American humor shows the high and mighty being flattened by anarchic proletarian violence: think the Three Stooges and Adam Sandler.

Goblins is the first in a projected trilogy, and I'll be there for each one of them. The only thing I ask for are some maps. I want a map of Clovenstone. Maps, please.

Book Review: Rivers of London (2011) by Ben Aaronovitch

Right now the book world is awash in fantasy literature. This is largely thanks to the twin aftershocks of Harry Potter and the Twilight books. Anything, it seems, with a fantasy or horror element, and any mash-up entangling the two with other genres, gets a warm greeting from the publishing industry. This has produced a lot of dreck, usually involving Buffy clones finding romance as they splatter the undead.

Rivers of London avoids zombies and romance, and is mostly successful, largely thanks to some solid comic writing and a clever mash-up of a police procedural and the world of magic. Our hero is Peter Grant, a young police constable who looks to be headed for a dull, behind-the-scenes job in the Met. All that changes when he's assigned to guard a crime scene involving a headless corpse and then ends up taking a witness statement from a ghost. From there it's a short step to becoming an apprentice wizard under the tutelage of Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who is, yes, a fully-fledged wizard. Nightingale's remit, which is known only to a few of his superiors, is to investigate supernatural crimes and keep the peace on the otherworldly side of London.

The headless corpse is the first in a series of gruesome deaths perpetrated by a vengeful ghost who is using the bodies of Londoners to reenact a bizarre and bloody Punch and Judy show. On top of trying to collar the murderous ghost, Grant and Nightingale have to keep the peace between the gods of London's rivers. London apparently has many rivers, mostly hidden, but each has it's god, and Mother Thames and Father Thames rule over them all.

Aaronovitch has a slick, chirpy writing style that owes a lot to Terry Pratchett, and he's smart enough to have Grant make a couple of references to Harry Potter just so we know that Grant realizes he's dropped into an absurd and improbable world. Aaronovitch also does a good job of explaining, or creating a theory of, how magic works. This is always a bit of a problem in books about magic; the authors either ignore the how and why, or they come up with a dopey, New Age-y explanation. Aaronovitch takes a more technical approach, and it works rather well. Even better is his decision to make the cop elements as real as possible. Take away the magical element and this would be a solid police procedural mystery; Grant talks like a cop, he follows Met protocol, he relies as much on police equipment as he does on magic, and he really seems to enjoy being a policeman.

Where Aaronovitch runs into trouble is with the plot. The final section of the book is a bit of a mess. The first problem is that the author begins to tie himself into thick, confusing knots explaining the magical and supernatural logic behind what's happening. Another bad decision is to have a climactic scene set in a packed Royal Opera House in which the killer ghost reveals himself and a massive riot breaks out. The problem is that this isn't the finale of the book. The riot ends, the reader's excitement evaporates, and the real end comes a short time later. The opera house scene is very Pratchettesque, but Sir Terry would have ended the novel right there.

Notice something? I haven't mentioned the river gods when discussing the killer ghost plot. That's because Aaronovitch fails to make the two plots intertwine in any meaningful way. That would be fine if the river gods' story was a sub-plot, but it isn't. A big chunk of the novel is devoted to dealing with the various gods and, while all of it is interesting and clever, it really doesn't have a damn thing to do with the main plot. The river gods need their own novel, not a superfluous role in a ghostly murder mystery.

There's a sequel to Rivers of London called Moon Over Soho (werewolves, I expect), and yet another is in the pipeline. I'll definitely read the next one and hope that the author has let an editor get a look at it first.

Book Review: Never the Bride (2006) by Paul Magrs

Here's the deal: if you're going to have a ridiculous, fantastical premise for your novel, you'd better follow through with some highly imaginative storytelling or a lot of humour to let us know that you appreciate how ludicrous your basic concept is.  Paul Magrs does neither. His heroine is Brenda, the original Bride of Frankenstein, who now operates a B & B in Whitby, England, where, with the help of her friend Effie, she battles supernatural baddies. Apparently, Whitby is a gateway to Hell so all kinds of shifty, dangerous characters reside in the neighborhood.

Magrs has a fun premise to build a comic, Terry Pratchett-esque story around, but he settles instead for a bland, cozy mystery with a dollop of horror. What's worse is that he structures his novel in a clumsy, episodic fashion. This gives the book the feeling of being a first-draft treatment for a TV series rather than a properly planned novel. Magrs can write, it's just that his plotting doesn't come close to matching his prose. Magrs has written for Dr. Who in the past, and that's what this novel comes across as: a Dr. Who story minus the doctor and minus the imagination.