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A review by therealadambeck
London Falling by Paul Cornell
4.0
While I found Cornell's style and tone difficult to pick up, by the time the characters were established, London Falling became another in a long line of books I've struggled to put down.
Cornell treads the path of dark modern fantasy with ease. At risk of spoiling things for those who like to dive in to novels as blindly as possible, I'll ask those folks to stop reading now, and simply pick up a copy of their own.
Cornell's story spends a great deal of time merely hinting at the existence of the macabre and fantastical. He masterfully dangles the thread of something darker and deeper hidden in London's streets ... before dropping the curtain and pulling his characters in. Even then, his characters are amateurs and outsiders in this world, a role in which Cornell keeps his readers, as well. Only slowly do we learn of a larger picture. The reader, as well as the unfortunate detectives, have to work hard for every scrap of exposition and fictional history ... all the while the gaining deeper insight into the characters themselves.
That touches on the one nitpick I would point to with the novel. It took a long time for me to feel attached to the characters. I liked them. They were interesting. However, I felt like they were somewhat one-dimensional for the first third of the novel. I could tell that Cornell had a definite picture of who these people were, that he was invested in them, it simply took me a while to feel the same.
That said, I really enjoyed how the characters' personalities and deeper motivations were revealed as the story built, and I'm not sure that Cornell could have done things differently without losing his own tone and the tale's compelling pacing.
As evidenced by my rating above, I would definitely recommend this novel. So much so that I'd recommend picking up the following book in the series – The Severed Streets – to avoid any anxiety before being able to dive back in to Cornell's London.
Fans of Neil Gaiman, Ian Tregillis, or Charles Stross will likely not be disappointed. Were I to qualify London Falling along those lines, I'd say that it skews towards the darker tones of each of those authors, while veering away from the light-heartedness of Stross' characters, instead finding itself closer to Tregillis' ... with a dash of Gaiman's wry humour to even things out.
Cornell treads the path of dark modern fantasy with ease. At risk of spoiling things for those who like to dive in to novels as blindly as possible, I'll ask those folks to stop reading now, and simply pick up a copy of their own.
Cornell's story spends a great deal of time merely hinting at the existence of the macabre and fantastical. He masterfully dangles the thread of something darker and deeper hidden in London's streets ... before dropping the curtain and pulling his characters in. Even then, his characters are amateurs and outsiders in this world, a role in which Cornell keeps his readers, as well. Only slowly do we learn of a larger picture. The reader, as well as the unfortunate detectives, have to work hard for every scrap of exposition and fictional history ... all the while the gaining deeper insight into the characters themselves.
That touches on the one nitpick I would point to with the novel. It took a long time for me to feel attached to the characters. I liked them. They were interesting. However, I felt like they were somewhat one-dimensional for the first third of the novel. I could tell that Cornell had a definite picture of who these people were, that he was invested in them, it simply took me a while to feel the same.
That said, I really enjoyed how the characters' personalities and deeper motivations were revealed as the story built, and I'm not sure that Cornell could have done things differently without losing his own tone and the tale's compelling pacing.
As evidenced by my rating above, I would definitely recommend this novel. So much so that I'd recommend picking up the following book in the series – The Severed Streets – to avoid any anxiety before being able to dive back in to Cornell's London.
Fans of Neil Gaiman, Ian Tregillis, or Charles Stross will likely not be disappointed. Were I to qualify London Falling along those lines, I'd say that it skews towards the darker tones of each of those authors, while veering away from the light-heartedness of Stross' characters, instead finding itself closer to Tregillis' ... with a dash of Gaiman's wry humour to even things out.