I’m a bit boggled—how did I miss one of Katherine Addison’s books? Addison is the author of the magnificent The Goblin Emperor and the follow up trilogy, The Cemeteries of Amalo*. Usually her books are an automatic pre-order for me. But somehow, I missed that she had also written an alt-universe take on Sherlock Holmes as well.
The book comes with the following tagline: “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.” And my response to that is yes—and no. No, these characters are not the Holmes and Watson that we are used to. But nor are they 100% unexpected, because Holmes-ian retellings are a genre in and of themselves. So I was primed to expect the unexpected.
Our narrator and Watson stand-in in The Angel of the Crows is Dr J.H. Doyle, a retired former army surgeon who was injured after an encounter with a fallen angel in Afghanistan. And Doyle’s corresponding Sherlock is an the not-so-fallen Angel of the title, Crow. Angels are treated quite differently here than they generally are in popular fiction; while they still have the common appearance of a humanoid-with-wings, they spend more time serving on Earth than in Heaven. Angels associated with buildings or other domiciles maintain their own personality, but are still somewhat linked to each other via the Consensus. Angels without such links to habitations do not have distinct personalities. They are known as the Nameless, and they exist as a more closely connected hivemind. To the point they are often compared to bees. And, as Doyle can attest to, angels can go mad and fall.
Crow, like Holmes before him, is a bit of an outcast. He is not bound to a dominion—but he also not part of the Nameless hive mind. He has kept his own personality, which has made others wary that he might fall. Which is such a pity, because even though he comes across as a bit odd, Crow is very kind. He doesn’t quite get humans, but he does genuinely want to help. He is awkward, and sometimes, Doyle has to stand in as his straight man:
“Doyle, this is fantastic!”
“What’s fantastic?” I said cautiously.
“They’ve found a murdered woman in Whitechapel. She was stabbed at least twenty-four times!”
“Not fantastic,” I said. “Try fascinating, since you are clearly fascinated.”
“Fantastic as in outré?” he offered.
“I’ll give you that,”
He tries. He also loves a good puzzle; his excitement above was clearly directed at how helpful he could be now he’s found a new crime to solve. The wording he chose though was just rather unfortunate. Angel, remember?
I find him delightful
The worldbuilding around the alternate 1880’s London, full of supernatural entities, is absolutely fantastic. The vibes are impeccable here. Addison has some fantastic takes not only on how angels operate, but vampires as well. I also really greatly enjoyed Crow and Doyle’s friendship; Doyle takes much longer to open up than Crow, but they both come to complement each other very well when it came to solving different cases. Their interactions were very enjoyable to read.
But it was the cases that ended up surprising me the most: despite the elaborate and well fleshed out alternative London and the more usual takes on both Holmes and Watson, most of the cases they solve here are fairly straight retellings of the originals—starting with A Study in Scarlet. With such a well fleshed out, alternate setting, I really was expected more major twists, but with the exception of a long running additional thread about Jack the Ripper, they’re all surprising faithful to the originals. This also makes the book quite episodic; this was something else else that plagued another alternate history Holmes homage, The Affair of the Mysterious Letter, but was less pronounced in The Tea Master and the Detective, most likely due to its novella length. Thankfully, the ongoing relationship between Doyle and Crow does mean that there is greater continuity here than in the originals, which does give a nice payoff at the end. These are not the characters you think they are, indeed.
I think my surprise is based around the fact that with such an elaborate and well thought out change in setting, I thought there would’ve been so many more opportunities to add a few deviations and a bit more originality to keep the reader guessing. But it seems Addison has mostly decided not to go that way, and I think this made some of the resolutions far too predictable. The Ripper plot is more unique in that regard, but I do wonder what else could have been? It does seem like a missed opportunity. I had been primed to expect the unexpected, after all.
Interestingly though, while this is—like so many Holmes-ian retellings—essentially a form of fan fiction, The Angel of the Crows seems like it would make for great fan-fic fodder itself. There’s just so much going outside the Holmes-style mysteries here that really deserves to be explored.
And for a bit of a mild spoiler: I wonder how many readers of this book came in expecting a good deal of Holmes/Watson shipping, and came away disappointed? It seems this is not what Addison is going for here either. Not everything needs to be slash fic
For cbr17bingo, this is Black. Very obviously from the cover.