It’s been a few years since the Sherlock Holmes fever struck and then receded, so we’ve been overdue for some detective work. Addison even makes note of the inspiration she drew from Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in particular, so it’s no surprise that since Sherlock opened with “A Study in Pink,” The Angel of the Crows opens with what we might call a Study in Gold. Instead of blood or pink garments, one of its most prominent clues is a golden angelic feather.
Yes, this version of Victorian London is densely populated by angels, monsters, creatures, fey, and various and sundry supernatural alongside the usual assortment of villains, murderers, and thieves. But that’s no real impediment to the world’s greatest detective or his newly stalwart companion. Dr. Doyle, who is essentially-but-not-quite Dr. Watson, joins the enigmatic Crow, who is Sherlock but for one distinct difference: Crow is an angel.
The Angel of the Crows takes us through the most famous of Holmes’s cases, including “A Study in Scarlet,” “The Sign of the Four,” and “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” as well as taking on Jack the Ripper. All of these stories have been done and done again though, in different times and mediums. The question we then have to ask is what this is adding to the Holmes corpus (excuse the pun). What new light does it shed on the characters, the setting, the mysteries, and so forth?
The angelic and monstrous elements are certainly the biggest and most obvious deviations, but what do they actually add or subtract? Not really that much, as it turns out. Crow is an angel, but he acts very much like his human original, sans the cocaine and fisticuffs. He’s also cheerfully oblivious rather than ill-tempered, and genuinely curious rather than an insufferable know-it-all. This is closer to the original Arthur Conan Doyle version and I don’t mind it, but it all adds up to a very nice varnish, attractive but only insofar as the original material below was already attractive.
The book is a bit stuck between the modern and the Victorian, which is an awkward place to be. It doesn’t feel quite like a real Victorian novel, and it lacks the glee of something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which really leaned into both the supernatural and the absurd. By making angels and monsters ubiquitous, Addison robbed them of their ability to excite. They’re mundane facts of life, and we are asked to treat them as such.
Creating a realistic fantasy world does require characters to be incurious about even the most radical elements of the world. In our world, everyone is pretty calm about the fact that we, say, get hurt and then time passes and we don’t even have to think about it and we heal and we’re basically fine again!? And sometimes there are scars!? But some people are excited about it. That’s partly why we have doctors. And if there were a book about healing, having a doctor who was excited about it would probably help the narrative. There needs to be a balance between enthusiasm and ubiquity, and Addison tended too far toward making everything very calm and normal.
It’s doubly a shame because the supernatural elements are the best part. There’s a particularly clever little nod to the original canon with the mention of bees (61), and I like the take on angelic power. There’s actually a lot about angels, angelic magic, and angelic hierarchies that Addison presents to us, but she never really lets the story be about angels. The Fallen are shrouded in mystery, and we don’t really see angels exercising any dramatic powers. Crow offers his protection at one point, but what does that really mean? And why must angels have locations to protect? It’s all very interesting and would have made a very interesting counterpoint to Garth Nix’s recent Angel Mage, which put angels at the fore. Instead we get tantalising hints that never resolve into a genuine magic system or separate angelic culture.
The same is true of Addison’s take on vampirism. Moriarty is a vampire! That’s so cool! Or…it should be. But Moriarty’s vampirism doesn’t really lead to much other fun interaction. In fact, Moriarty isn’t even really a villain or a foil. He’s just kind of there to be spooky. That being said, Addison’s vampires are fascinating: they’re matriarchal, feel an overwhelming need to own houses, and serve as something between opium peddlers and madams to the human public. They, and their inferior cousins the “hemophages” (literally: blood eaters) have a perpetual rivalry that would have been amazing to see play out on a larger or deeper scale.
Addison clearly has imagination by the bucketful. There are lots of moments of friction between what we think we know of Victorian England and the England on display in The Angel of the Crows. Doyle at one point observes of a young woman: “It transpired that she was a most accomplished governess, being able to teach French, music, and clairvoyance along with the standard subjects,” (131). I adore this. I love alternate Victorian settings, and this is quite a good one in its small details.
Addison also has a lot to say on a meta level about the Victorian setting. At one point, Doyle draws a fascinating parallel between Fallen angels and fallen women, but gives both little further attention. Yet again, Addison hamstrings herself with the setting: she wants to say things about colonialism, about feminism and morality, and about gender, but she’s also trying to cover the most famous Sherlock Holmes stories and maintain a Victorian setting, so everything gets a bit muddled. She can’t go deep on any one topic and so tries to do everything. It doesn’t quite work.
The Angel of the Crows also missteps when it draws back from the detective work and mystery. There are no twisty puzzles to uncover. In one tale, Doyle complete an autopsy, pinpoints the cause of death, and then confirms it with a minimum of fuss. There aren’t that many red herrings or baffling details. Either it’s a straight shot from murder to murderer, or the mystery is so unguessable that another character has to come into the narrative, explain everything, and then leave.
Read the original stories and you might be surprised at how much the solutions depend on people confessing in great detail. Addision keeps a lot of that, but misunderstands modern audiences, who find long, direct explanations a little anticlimactic. It’s supposed to be about clues and discoveries! But the world’s greatest detective doesn’t do a whole lot of detecting.
While enjoyable and well-written, it hews too closely to the original stories to feel truly fresh or original. “The Speckled Band” is still about a snake. “The Sign of the Four” still has almost all of its basic elements intact. I wanted this book to play with and sometimes undermine my expectations, but it was too scrupulously faithful to the original stories in setting, tone, and execution. The Angel of the Crows is good for Holmes fans of any stripe or those looking for a diverting read, but it doesn’t entirely rise to the challenge of reworking Victorian and detective classics.
The Angel of the Crows is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of June 23rd 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Katherine Addison, author of The Goblin Emperor, returns with The Angel of the Crows, a fantasy novel of alternate 1880s London, where killers stalk the night and the ultimate power is naming.
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.
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. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent.
Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.
