The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

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.

London 1888. Angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. A utopia, except for one thing: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds.

Dr J. H. Doyle returns to London having been wounded in Afghanistan by a Fallen, and finds himself lodging in Baker Street with the enigmatic angel Crow. But living with a rogue angel is not so easy; the pair find themselves drawn into the supernatural and criminal worlds of London, from a man kidnapped by a vampire nest to Jack the Ripper's horrific murders.

Besides Doyle's nightmares, there is the lingering worry that Crow might Fall...

• ISBN10: 1781088500
• ISBN13: 9781781088500
• Publish Date: 17 September 2020 (first published 23 June 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Solaris
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Angel of the Crows is a period historical urban fantasy mashup of Holmes & Watson and Jack the ripper by Katherine Addison. Released 23rd June 2020 by Macmillan on their Tor Forge imprint, it's 448 pages and available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a wingfic retetelling of several Holmes and Watson adventures with Holmes reimagined as a black winged angel guarding over London, Dr. Doyle (Watson) battling a supernatural injury and the both of them solving mysteries and generally keeping London safer for the populace.

The author has a strong and deft touch with characterization and detailed flowing period dialogue. I felt, however, that the central characters weren't ever made to be anything but Holmes & Watson (with wings, yes, and Watson's trying not to turn into a soulless creature of the night... but other than that). I'm an admittedly huge canonical Holmes & Watson nerd, and the plots of the stories included are instantly recognizable and mostly unchanged.

There are some moderately subtle elements of gender fluidity (which provide a plot twist) and a sweet bromance between the titular characters in the book, but nothing graphic. In fact, the attraction(?) was too subtle for me. I wouldn't hold it up as a beacon of representation for LGBQTIA readers. It is straight up Holmes and Watson with supernatural creatures. The author is a very capable wordsmith and I did enjoy reading it very much, but the blurb promising "not the characters you expect" was a bit misleading because they were exactly the characters I expected. (and that, at least in my case, isn't a bad thing).

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[elysium]

So, we have Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. In an alternate London and there’s also angels, vampires and hellhounds. Sort of all thrown in together, at least it felt like it. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the book, but it wasn’t this.

Angels named Crow is our Sherlock and hellhound named Dr Doyle is our Watson. Angels have a habitation in a public building where they are bound and sort of… oversee it? Protect it/or it’s people? Crow no longer have a habitation and he’s an anomaly. Normally after angels lose their habitation, they become Fallen but Crow didn’t. Instead, he helps solve crimes.

Doyle was injured in a war in Afghanistan by a Fallen and became a hellhound. Now that he’s back in London and trying to figure out what to do, he meets Crow and helps him solve crimes.

The book had good moments but mostly I was just confused. There are many cases that they work on and keeping them in order was kinda hard. And then remembering where the other case was left. I liked Crow and Doyle should have been far more interesting considering he had a lot going on and many secrets.

I’m not very familiar with Sherlock Holmes stories so those details were lost on me and I wasn’t expecting the Sherlock Holmes story/retelling, I expected more of a fantasy book. And since I’m not a fan of Sherlock, I wasn’t as excited as I thought I would be. I had to reread the book synopsis to check if it mentioned Sherlock and if I had somehow missed it but it didn’t mention it.