Finished The Neon Court. I don't know if the ending is a cop-out, as
yumiyoshi says, because the ending-- err well, the resolution perhaps, rather than the ending-ending-- is a thing of midnight obscurity to me. I sincerely trust that Griffin is *not* suggesting that tendresse for Matthew is the reason why Oda does what she does, or perhaps doesn't do what she doesn't do; but as I have no idea how she gets rid of Blackout, I'm left with that as the only conclusion. And yes, by me it is feeble indeed. This actually is one reason why I prefer The Minority Council. It does not involve Matthew being yanked somewhere suddenly, it does not involve Bakker (a character Griffin clearly had a hard time saying good-bye to), and it does not have Oda threatening death to Matthew and then unaccountably fail to follow through.However. I'm also reading the Nightside novels by Simon R Green. The Nightside is a part of London where it's always 3 in the morning and odd things abound and, as
mvrdrk said, everyone talks alike. They're like popcorn. Green speaks of horrors and unspeakable things done in the shadows and so on; and as ever when you talk like that, Mr Lovecraft, the reader remains resolutely unconvinced. Contrast this with Griffin's London where the sun sort of just doesn't come up and no one really notices except Matthew, who only eventually twigs to it, as he keeps running all through London and its suburbs in the middle of the night. Now *that* London of perpetual 3 am is absolutely chilling.Read also Sarah Pinborough's A Matter of Blood. Also London, but sort of future AU. Grimy and nasty and slow to grab (me, at any rate) but eventually sucked me in. Another book that has its denouement in Covent Gardens, though it takes a while to get there. It's more about people than place, and the people are a pretty messed-up lot; but it struck me in an odd way as doing well what Suzanne McLeod did badly. At least, the obscure references to obscure things in the past didn't confuse me the way McLeod's did; and in this case the genre-fuck, for lack of a politer word, was rather exhilarating. *Not* just a horror story, *not* just a detective story, *not* just a fantasy, *not* just a ghost story, *not* just a dystopian novel... Aaronovitch only manages to keep two genre balls in the air, though he does it superbly. Pinborough is balancing a whole bunch, to the point where one shrugs and dismisses the genre question entirely.
I just wish she were writing about more likable people.
