This is not the story you think it is. These are not the characters you think they are. This is not the book you are expecting. (ain’t that the truth?)
In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. And those human beings remain all too human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent.
Murderers still stalk the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.
Nowhere in the blurb on the dust jacket did it in any way hint this was an Occult AU Sherlock Holmes Wing!fic, and yet here we are. The fact that the story started as a Sherlock fanfic however is what truly takes the cake for me. I could take the reveal about Doyle/Watson (both of them actually), I could take Crow/Holmes being a sexless (though technically female, because all Angels are female, like bees apparently? I did not know this about bees), I could even take that the blurb promised that the Fall of an Angel is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds (and then never showed this fact. You don’t bring up something like that, and then maybe insinuate that the Great Fire of London was actually an Angel Falling.) What hit my limits was that not only did this book have Jack the Ripper and several other real-life crimes thrown in, but it was a mish-mash “Greatest Hits” compendium of the Arthur Conan Doyle Canon. I’m fine with inspired stories; this just felt like “my fanfic got published with only minimal name changes”.
It was both aggravating and enjoyable that because the occult were commonplace in this universe, Addison did not exposition info dump; it made sense in the bounds of the story, but I was left with some questions. Like, yes, I suppose the addition of a mongoose made sense in “The Speckled Band”, but then again did it need it? What are hemophages: Are they zombies? Are they blood-obsessed fiends that are still slightly different than vampires? Is the Angel of Whitehall this world’s answer to Mycroft Holmes? Was Mary Morstan necessarily needed? She was a chit in the canon, she’s a chit here.
I did enjoy this book, as much as I seem to be picking at it; it was an entertaining and enjoyable read, and I would pick up a sequel if Addison ever wrote one. She has a captivating turn of phrase that holds your attention; once I started the book I didn’t put it down until I finished it in a day. It also cemented my desire to purchase and read The Goblin Emperor.
(Though an aside unrelated to the book itself: you have to love the review George R.R. Martin gave for this book; it has got to be one of the most self-promoting, egotistical things I have read in a very long time.)
