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winter's gifts
Ben Aaronovitch, Winter's Gifts.
Winter's Gifts is a novella written by the English writer Ben Aaronovitch but set in Wisconsin. It contains a character named Scott Walker who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If you're not from Wisconsin, this may be either a forgettable name or a harmless joke. If you are from Wisconsin--or if, like me, you lived there for any part of the twenty-teens--this is the equivalent of introducing a character named Boris Johnson who got his professional start in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I spent at least half of what is admittedly not a very long book oscillating between fear that Walker was a destructive supernatural horror and fear that I might be expected to like him. Let me offer the warning or reassurance, therefore, that this Scott Walker is not intended to be sympathetic, but he also, despite multiple efforts in that direction, does not come to a sticky end.
Localization concerns aside, this is another entertaining entry in a long-running series. I find the more-or-less devout Christian FBI agent Kim Reynolds less immediately sympathetic than architecture nerd Peter Grant, which tells you something else about American political divisions. On the other hand, she felt more like a distinct person to me than the German protagonist of October Man, who kept slipping into Peter-flavored architecture facts. The novella also felt more or less complete unto itself; you don't need to be simultaneously caught up on the comics, a confusion I've occasionally encountered in past installments.
(I read this as a Netgalley ARC. The ebook is available in the US from Subterranean Press; they're releasing a collectible edition in December.)
Winter's Gifts is a novella written by the English writer Ben Aaronovitch but set in Wisconsin. It contains a character named Scott Walker who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If you're not from Wisconsin, this may be either a forgettable name or a harmless joke. If you are from Wisconsin--or if, like me, you lived there for any part of the twenty-teens--this is the equivalent of introducing a character named Boris Johnson who got his professional start in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I spent at least half of what is admittedly not a very long book oscillating between fear that Walker was a destructive supernatural horror and fear that I might be expected to like him. Let me offer the warning or reassurance, therefore, that this Scott Walker is not intended to be sympathetic, but he also, despite multiple efforts in that direction, does not come to a sticky end.
Localization concerns aside, this is another entertaining entry in a long-running series. I find the more-or-less devout Christian FBI agent Kim Reynolds less immediately sympathetic than architecture nerd Peter Grant, which tells you something else about American political divisions. On the other hand, she felt more like a distinct person to me than the German protagonist of October Man, who kept slipping into Peter-flavored architecture facts. The novella also felt more or less complete unto itself; you don't need to be simultaneously caught up on the comics, a confusion I've occasionally encountered in past installments.
(I read this as a Netgalley ARC. The ebook is available in the US from Subterranean Press; they're releasing a collectible edition in December.)