The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin – review

Urban sorcerer Matthew Swift’s personal situation can be pretty well summed up in this anecdote:

Once when I was a kid I was taken to see a seer.  His name was Khan.

“Hey, dude…you’re like…gonna die.  It’s after when it gets complicated.” 

At the time I thought he was being pretentiously metaphorical. 

[But] Khan, in his own special, unhelpful way, had been right all along. 

Imagine my embarrassment.

In the first book in Kate Griffin’s series that continues to prove to the world how awesome urban fantasy would be if it the genre name had a goddamned thing to do with its content, Matthew Swift is resurrected by a spell, his soul animated with the life of the blue electric angels until they are he and he is them and they are light, they are life, they are fire.  He battles a shadow that is taking over London and killing all the sorcerers, and staggers away from the aftermath without any real direction for his new life.

He gets it, in spades, in The Midnight Mayor, or, the inauguration of Matthew Swift.  As with the first book, the title provides a loose summary of what happens in the story; it comes as no surprise when Matthew takes a telephone call and finds the office of the Midnight Mayor conferred upon him when the previous Mayor breathes his last breath into that telephone receiver.  Matthew isn’t sure whether the previous Mayor was crazy or brilliant to have tapped him, the last sorcerer in London, to be his successor, but what he does know is that the ravens in the Tower of London have died, the city’s defenses are collapsing around him, and the Death of Cities is coming for London…and it’s wearing a pinstripe suit.  Matthew is the last, best, chance of salvation for the city he loves, and he’s racing the clock to solve the mystery of who or what called the Death of Cities to London before it can kill him, too….

First, let me note that I loved the first book.  Absolutely adored it, considered it one of my favorite books of 2009.  But it wasn’t the easiest book to get into, so I was quite pleased to find that I slid into the rhythms of Mathew Swift’s thinking much easier this time around.  I think, in all honesty, it had to do with having read the first one until I hit the tipping point of understanding the cadence and the point of view of the blue electric angels, so that when I opened this book I already had that template in my mind.

As far as the story goes, it’s kind of a slowly unfolding mystery, and manages to keep some shroud of enigma around it until nearly the very end.  Once the cause of the Death of Cities’ arrival is known, however, there are no real surprises in what the situation is or how Matthew handles it.  I still can’t decide whether that is a criticism or just an observation.  I didn’t mind it, exactly, but there was a slight feeling of anticlimax at the very end. 

It was very slight, though, and really the story of Matthew Swift is more interesting to me than individual plot threads. 

I love the world that Griffin has created in this series.  It is fabulous urban magic, the magic of a city, and it sparks along the subway tracks and buzzes in the lights overhead on a dark autumn night.  When I drive around my own city after having spent time looking at the world through Matthew’s eyes, I see my world differently.  I see the graffiti on the levy wall, and I wonder if it’s a spell.  I hear “end of the line” on a bus route, and I laugh to myself.  Here’s why:

I looked for the signs.

An empty spray-paint can tossed onto the top of a bus shelter.

A painted elephant on the side of a house, playing a large trombone whose nose pointed further south.

A wall with four windows added onto it and a front door, from which a child with a red balloon peered towards the nearest bus stop.

A message scratched into the glass window of the bus—END OF THE LINE.

Griffin also has a knack for distilling modern life into new and unique monsters, summonings, demons…whatever you want to call the things that go bump in the night.  My favorite in this book was the saturate, “the grease-monster, the oil-devil, the demon of fat poured down the drain, of tallow and cookery grime, of burnt-up crispy bits and congealed animal liquids poured down the plughole.”  That’s just—I can’t come up with a superlative for that one.  Just spot-on vivid imagining of the sort of devils the modern world fears, hence that sorcerers could animate and use against us. 

The whole book is quotable and filled with incisive commentary on our world.  I find Griffin’s humor to be hilarious, though it’s more subtle and based on viewing the world askance than it is obviously comedic.  If you are someone who loves a city, then you need to read this series.  Hands down.  Also highly recommended to fans of urban fantasy, and to those who want modern fantasy that has no werewolves, vampires, zombies, or fairies.  Just sorcerers and the things that exist because humanity creates a magic all on its own.