Customer Reviews

A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I didn't want to read this book. It was a gift that I almost gave away unread. I'd practically given up on urban fantasy, put off by far too many mediocre books with far too-similar plots and revolting artwork (if I see one more supposedly-attractive woman's butt or bare back, I. Am. Going. To. Scream). Or in the rare UF with a male protagonist, far too many efforts to ape the pulp noir genre that fail miserably.

So I was caught a bit off-guard when this book turned out to be AMAZING.

The story follows Matthew Swift, an "urban sorcerer" in London. Although he can channel electricity from wall plugs and banish demons using trash bins, he was not an especially powerful or ambitious sorcerer -- that was, until somebody killed him and brought him back to life. Now Matthew's eyes are blue (they were brown) and now he has both incredible power and a driving ambition: revenge.

The story follows his quest for vengeance as he stalks and tackles his enemies one-by-one -- but with some fascinating diversions. First, he's being trailed by the Hunger, the same creepy wraithlike creature that killed him the first time. Second, Matthew himself is no longer quite human, as the story gradually reveals -- or wholly sane, really, but this is a minor matter. Griffin reveals all this with dark, dense, chewy prose that reminds me of China Mieville and Storm Constantine at their best. She sandwiches this between devilishly witty humor (as when Matthew weaves a powerful protective spell out of a subway ticket, simply by reading the ticket's fine print) and elegant characterization, and tops it all off with some of the most original magic I've ever seen. Best of all, she lovingly depicts London in all its multicultural, multilayered glory, from the rush of the Tube to the reek of the Thames, from bustling core to sleepy suburbs. I'm a New Yorker and I love my city, but this book makes me want to emigrate.

(No, seriously.)

(OK, maybe just an extended visit.)

Anyway, I don't give five-star reviews often, but this book deserves them. Buy it, and enjoy. I'm off to go waitlist the second book of the series.

I love novels that take the world I know and present fantastic elements just underneath it's surface. From the good (wisecracking Chicago-based wizards) to the not-so-good (Vampire executioners with poor impulse control), I'll read just about anything. What makes this book special is its rich mythology. The mysteries of what magic is and how it works are inventive and plausible. It takes a little getting used to as the reader, like the protagonist, is dropped into the story without knowing which way is up. If you like books about mystical forces and the people who wield them, you will enjoy getting to know Matthew Swift.

with subtle wit and layer upon layer of life and sorcerers, magic, London, the underground tube and telephones. We are first treated to a mish-mash of thoughts, feelings, terror and wonder in the beginning of the book. Much is written in third person of "We and Our". However you soon realize that Ms. Griffin is merely painting a picture with words of what it would be like to awaken after being dead for two years and having a new life form inside of you - the blue electric angels. The story is revenge against The Hunger that murdered Matthew and good vs. evil. Perhaps more importantly it is about Matthew's resurrection and his new life. He makes alliances and enemies and alliances out of enemies. Eventually he unites a group of like minded people (except for a group of a radical religious group) and unites them against a common enemy. The world has greatly changed since his death and The Tower intimidates and kills dissidents. Fear rules the magical world and even The Order (religious group)want it eliminated. There are skirmishes, battles, trators, spying, and Run RUN RUN and NEVER STOP running to and from life and it's experiences.

What I truly liked was how Ms. Griffin continually painted pictures with her dialog and descriptions. She brings Matthew to life quite like you might expect from one recently dead, and one never having physically lived sharing the same body. Those subtle sounds and voices you hear on telephones becomes the electric blue angels and live a symbiotic life within Matthew. They are electricity and remember all. They can go to the moon and back in a nano-second. They are the thoughts and lost words of everyone on the telephone. They are all of us - our energy made the magic that made them. The simple wonders of our physical world by an alien being help shape the resurrection of Matthew Swift. As the book progresses the "I's" and the "We's" start blending more and more and we see Matthew growing to accept and understand what he has become even tho no one else knows what to make of him. Finally, he is shaped by the basic goodness that Matthew used to be.

It takes a bit of staying power to get through the beginning (of the book) but it is well worth it. I wasn't used to read books in the third person, but it serves the story well.

I highly recommend this book because it is, indeed, a new fantasy world different from the mundane we hear about every day.

Kate Griffin is actually Catherine Webb in disguise, and Catherine Webb is the author of the Horatio Lyle novels, which I tend to gush over whenever the subject of YA fiction comes up. So, being a fan of Webb, I was excited to get my hands on her foray into urban fantasy.

I adored this. It completely took over my brain and hasn't yet let go. The world Griffin-Webb (I've decided to hyphenate her) creates, the magical underworld of London, is utterly enthralling.

Griffin-Webb's signature style is here in spades, all run-on sentences and dense, surprising descriptions. The dual-first person narration was fascinating and unique.

The magic of this world, the layers and detail Griffin-Webb injects into her mythology, took my breath away. It runs through the tunnels of the Underground, sparks through power and telephone lines, hums with traffic. It ebbs and flows to the rhythm of the city, and it can be found in the pigeon, the rat, the concrete beneath your feet. Matthew Swift, urban sorceror, paints protective wards with spray paint, builds a magical barrier from the rules of a Travelcard, fights monsters made of trash and broken street signs.

The book is also a love song to London. Griffin-Webb's descriptions pull you into the city, and made me ache for the ability to just sit on a bench and soak in the smell and feel and crackle of it. But it's not love just for the shiny, tourist-friendly surface we're all familiar with. The smog and the smoke and the pigeons, the rats, the homeless, the trash - all of it is magical, all of it is life. And through Matthew Swift - whose heart beats with the rhythm of the city, who finds strength in its noise and light and heat - we love it all.

Consider me a crazy Matthew Swift fangirl as of about fifty pages into this book.

Based on all the other stellar reviews, I feel that I may be a bit harsh, but I really found this book difficult to read. What I look for in a good book, is a world that I would like to inhabit, and I did not find that here. The characters were interesting, but not likable, and I found the writing almost too descriptive, where more action would have been appropriate. I think it is a well written book however, with an interesting premise, which is why I give it 3 stars. That being said, I do not feel the need to inhabit this world any longer, and am uninterested in any sequels.

Kate Griffin is a talented author who clearly deserves more attention. Her first adult novel is an original, fascinating urban fantasy that has some of the most interesting magic and exciting physical action I've read in a while. The plot is intricate and well thought-out, and Ms. Griffin's descriptive language is fluent and frequently beautiful.

The reason I'm giving the novel four stars rather than five has everything to do with characterization, which is so minimal as to render the rest of the book less than the sum of its parts. Matthew Swift, in spite of his unique and complicated nature, presumably experiences emotions from time to time, but you wouldn't know that from reading Ms. Griffin's prose. She handles Swift and her other characters as though they're bugs pinned to a board; she observes their movements, and will tell you about those in detail, but only rarely does she give the reader any indication that her characters might have some kind of inner life. The last fifty or so pages of the novel should be devastating, but are not, because rather than riding along with what must be Swift's hope, grief, terror, & etc., we watch a mostly unflappable, opaque hero go through the motions until the bad guy is taken care of. The conclusion of the book left me both frustrated and disappointed.

Still and all, I'd recommend this book to fantasy fans. It's worth a look, if only for the sake of a few amazing sequences involving water, and paint, and the occasional spark of blue fire.

I love this book. It's definitely well written, although in a different style than I'm used to, shifting occasionally into a sort of stream of consciousness. i love love the whole concept of urban magic--using the words and symbols of the society we live in instead of some kind of mystic runes or latin phrases. in that sense, it'll probably remind you a bit of Neil Gaiman. I love the amalgam of Matthew Swift and the angels--you're never quite sure where one ends and the other begins, or whether they are completely fused and indistinguishable. I love that the Matthew Swift/electric angel "entity" isn't too sure, either. Anyways, if you like urban fantasy, you should like this book, although be warned, it's a bit more complex and existential than Jim Butcher, but miles better than Simon R. Green.

Matthew Swift wakes up. This is a bit of problem, because Matthew Swift is dead. Who killed him, and more importantly, who brought him back? This sense of mystery is at the core of this book and propels it forward.

The world building in this series is spectacular. You feel the pulse of the city. It's set in London, in our time, but that background isn't used as short cut to developing the setting. Instead, it enriches the story.

There is a bit of confusing pronoun use toward the beginning, which is explained satisfactorily later in the book. Once I got past the first 10 - 15 pages, I was absorbed into the book and couldn't put it down. The language is very descriptive, however, the descriptions enhance the story, they deepen the emotions, and they make the story and the characters come alive. I did not find myself skimming paragraphs looking for the story to resume, because the descriptive language is used to push the story along.

So much of fantasy is about reverence for nature, and the evil that urbanization brings. This book flips that on it's head, just like it flips much of the Urban Fantasy genre on it's head. The only romance in this book is the romance of the city and of the light that can be found in its dark subways.

Story and characters really pulled me in. Only complaint would be that there was a bit more padding in there than there needed to be. Some things could have been trimmed and the book would have been tighter and better for it. Would LOVE to see a movie adaptation!

A new and creative concept put together in a challenging, yet credible story. Fascinating