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1. The Setting
Did the contemporary London setting work for you? Do you feel it needed too detailed a knowledge of London streets and regions? How about the pervasive integration of the supernatural sphere into the real world, with most London citizens unaware of this?
Comments
I've spent some time in and around London, but not a lot and not widely. But I have bought a coffee from a place just outside Covent Garden, and wandered through there despairing at the overpriced tat. I think that knowledge helped. The book draws on London as it is, and not the twee place of pageantry of the tourist brochures. London may not have the over-enthusiastic public relations of cities like New York, but it has as much life and variety, including the endless hustle and an undercurrent of mob violence. Saying all that, I don't think I lost much my not knowing the detailed geography of bits of London.
It certainly helped to pick up some of the nuances. For instance, just the names "Fleet" and "Tyburn" have a lot of associations for British people, and terms like "The Jackanory version" and "he just needed a Yorkie bar and a rolled-up copy of The Sun" probably don't mean much for our colonial cousins.
The hidden supernatural is a problem with every urban fantasy work: how to reconcile a vibrant magical world with an unknowning and unaffected mundane populace? The solution here, that it's weak but gaining strength, is a decent-enough justification to suspend disbelief and enjoy the novel.
I have a casual knowledge of London; I know it enough to recognise definite elements in the book. I will say that it absolutely bleeds London flavour (and more generally British flavour), and the super strong sense of place is something I love. The supernatural also mainly has that sense of place.
I like that it dwindled after the Second World War, and now it's coming back.
The London setting definitely worked for me - very strong sense of place - London is very nearly a character in the book. I didn't get all the references - there were some turns of phrase I didn't recognize - but less than 5, probably. I've been to London a few times, so I'm familiar with some of the parts around Covent Garden and the Opera House and Charing Cross Road - and also Belgravia. But not so much the up- and down-stream parts. Some of the river names I knew (Fleet), but most no. I don't think it was really necessary to have a handle on the geography to enjoy the book.
Also very much part of the setting was the Metropolitan Police organization and culture. No idea what all those acronyms were, but they sounded legit.
I do know what a Yorkie bar is, and what The Sun is, but if there's some inference made by connecting the two (perhaps these are the well-known accouterments of Sheffield Yobs?) then I don't know what it is. Also don't know what a Jackanory version is. And there was a phrase early in the book that I took to mean 'going for a walk' but I didn't recognize the phrase itself. The rest I got on with pretty well.
What didn't grab me so much was all the little river gods being people who fell in the water and just became gods. That felt a bit silly and nonsensical. And I also don't care much for the way these kind of books (this one included) end up being more or less a catalogue of supernatural beings - river gods, ghosts, vampires, whatever the maid is. This really does nothing for me. I think JK Rowling handled this better in Harry Potter in that she at least had unique creatures, and they weren't a focus of the books in the same way they were here.
I did like the way the people of the rivers sort of stood in for different districts of London, though how their individual personalities might have been a reflection of their neighburhood was lost on me.
Yorkie bars (a particularly large and chunky chocolate bar) were originally advertised as "not for girls" with the implication that not even all blokes would be able to tackle them... only real men...
The Sun (a moderately conservative tabloid newspaper with a strong emphasis on sport and other traditional manly pursuits) used to always have a picture of a topless model on p3 ( the facing page as you opened it).
Neither of those is quite the same in these days of equality, but the combined image presents a stereotype often used in British comedy.
Jackanory was a children's storytelling TV programme which those of us over a certain age will remember with fondness. Stories were told in short simple chunks over several days. It was aired in the timeslot when (traditionally) mums had a little while with their kids before making dinner and the husband came back from work at 6pm to watch serious things like The News. It took over from the even older radio programme Listen with Mother (which I know of but don't actually remember).
A phrase that is kind of obvious in intent but maybe not derivation is "blues and twos"... this is an emergency vehicle in a real hurry in full emergency mode, with blue flashing lights and two-tone siren. All other road users are required by law to get out of the way in such a case. In central London, realistically the police car or whatever will still only be going at walking pace because of traffic congestion (and to avoid collateral damage and accidents) but the principle of getting others out of the way still applies.
It worked fine for me. I don't feel I missed anything not being from London. I had no trouble following the action. The only time I was in London was a short layover on the way from Boston to Prague, so the only part of England I saw was that in view of Heathrow. I agree that London was like a character, not just a place. A very strong rootedness.