Things I Like: The Gods Of Gotham

[fadeaccompli]

When I read Lyndsay Faye's new book, Jane Steele, I found it so brilliant I promptly went out and looked up more books by the same author. The Gods Of Gotham is one of her earlier books, and it's not brilliant: it's merely excellent.

It's antebellum New York City, and Timothy Wilde is, through no fault of his own, strong-armed into becoming part of the brand new police service in the city, in one of the worst precincts available. (He has a rather rocky relationship with his brother Valentine, who's behind the idea.) He promptly runs into a runaway little girl covered in blood, which turns into a murder and conspiracy mystery involving a lot of grim topics: child prostitution, serial murder, poverty and abuse and racism and anti-Catholic/-Irish sentiment (I'm not sure what 'bigotry on the basis of religion' is called, so I'm lumping it into racism for now), political corruption and riots and lynchings and...

...and yet, this meticulously researched historical murder mystery isn't grimdark. It's a lot of fun. Oh, the dark topics are taken quite seriously, but much like with Jane Steele, the lively protagonist voice does wonders for keeping the reader on an even keel through some really grim topics. Things are terrible; he does his best; even some of the terrible people have moments of kindness, and some of the kindest people can do terrible things. I found the picture of the city and the characters more engaging than the mystery itself (which I had half-solved well before the protagonist simply because of conservation of characters), but it's a damn good book. I've got the sequel, Seven for a Secret, sitting in front of me right now, and as soon as I finish writing this I'm going to crack the cover and try it out.

Comments

[kore]

I've been wanting to read Jane Steele, but people have been blurbing it as "Like Jane Eyre but BETTER" which makes me cross. I didn't so much like the WIlde books, but LF has written one of the very very few Doyle pastiches I love, a Holmes/Ripper crossover. If you like the idea of a Holmes/Ripper pastiche from Watson's POV at all, I really recommend it.

[fadeaccompli]

Oh, gosh, Jane Steele is not "like Jane Eyre but better!", it's "like Jane Eyre but with a different twist!" It has nifty appropriate epigraphs from Jane Eyre before every chapter, and the protagonist adores that novel herself, and comments several times on similarities and differences between herself and its protagonist. Whether it's to your taste or not I couldn't say, but the book itself is deeply respectful of Jane Eyre as a novel, even when the protag makes a comment or two of the "Well, I wouldn't do that" type.

I'm not very into Sherlock Holmes and tend to avoid Jack the Ripper stories, so I admit a Holmes/Ripper crossover sounds like the very opposite of my kind of thing. (In general I dislike serial killer stories and Smarter Than Everyone Around Him characters both, unless handled very delicately.) But I'm liking this author's books so much, I may try that one anyway.

[kore]

Well, that sounds a lot better! And a lot more like something I'd want to read. There have been so many "revisions" of Jane Eyre -- and I speak as someone who thinks Wide Sargasso Sea is a great work of art -- it makes me tired. It's very fashionable now to dump on Bronte and her book.