2020 urban fantasy, fourth of its series. Lydia Crow is still dealing
with the fallout of her last case, but new problems keep coming.
There are few surprises here, even a couple of months and nearly
fifty other books after I read the last one so it wasn't fresh in my
mind. It was obvious that, in order to get out of her awkward position
as a family member who's not involved in the family business, Lydia
would have to move either further out (impossible) or further in,
probably displacing her Uncle Charlie and taking over. Well, that's
what happens this time, though it's by no means all wrapped up by the
end of the book.
Meanwhile, it's increasingly obvious to Lydia and to the reader that
the uneasy truce between the four magical families of London is being
deliberately upset by an outsider, but nobody she talks to is willing
to hear that. That's one of the perils of becoming the older
generation, I suppose, comfortable and set in your ways but
remembering the joy of the war as well as the peace you helped bring
about.
That's what impressed me about this book, the solid treatment of the
larger series plot; I found the more immediate incident less engaging.
We do meet the Pearls at last, and something has clearly gone very
awry, but there's so much power involved that further investigation
would be distinctly unsafe. Lydia broke up with her policeman
boyfriend, but is clearly going to get back together, even with the
reason for the breakup unresolved; at the same time she's clearly
becoming an alcoholic, still a functioning one for the moment, but
when that's apparently reversed there seems to be no reason for it.
The world feels cramped, too: we meet Uncle Charlie and Lydia's
parents, and hardly any other named Crows. Two Foxes. Two Silvers.
Even the families that favour "keeping the blood pure" ought to have
more members than this.
It's not that there's too much moment to moment stuff; indeed, if
anything there's too much series plot here, after almost none in
book 2. But I rarely felt engaged by the small-scale stuff. There are
certainly worse problems to have with a book; at least the big matters
were there. But if Lydia is going to make a go of the big things, I'd
like to see her getting her own psyche slightly more in order first
rather than happily stumbling from incident to incident.