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 under 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.
Even before reading the afterword, this struck me as a whimsically conceived book. Nonetheless Addison does her usual excellent job of world building and characterization, and the book develops a compelling texture.
An eccentric genius and an army doctor recently returned from the Afghanistan war solve crimes from their Baker Street apartment in Victorian London: supernatural edition.
Well-written, with lots of nods to the original source, yet plenty of original twists.
