Madness of Angels

Rating: 3.5 stars

It’s difficult to rate A Madness of Angels, since there were 2 star moments and 5 star moments riddled throughout the book. I settled somewhere in between and rounded up for my overall enjoyment.

Without getting into the thickness of plot, I’ll just say that this urban fantasy world was definitely a refreshing remix of familiar concepts, but with a very creative result. Among a world of very magical beings, Matt Swift is a sorcerer – a person able to sense magic in the artificial. It’s a strange sort of concept that works: magic in the streets, the pipes, in the sounds of car exhaust. The city itself is brought to life through this concept of urban magic that can be sensed and manipulated by the sorcerers.

And just like Mr. Swift, I found myself lost in the weaving of magic as well.

But there was another sense of being lost that wasn’t so pleasant. While I applaud this author for her craftsmanship in stringing concepts together, she seemed to have overdone it when it came to descriptions. Paragraphs and paragraphs, and even pages of so much description that I’ve literally dozed off when reading post-dinner, only to wake up and realized I got nothing out of the last two pages of nonsense. My goodness, it was almost like listening to someone who loves the sound of his or her own voice giving a speech. In this case, less would have been more. And sometimes, the walls of text worked when something truly interesting was happening. But for the most part, I literally felt my eyes glazing over while I skimmed these pages and forced myself to stay awake.

There was also a moment where I wanted to DNF this book. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t. But it was probably around the 40 percent mark – during almost half of the book, Swift was pretty much working solo. Granted, he met people and such, but he never really interacted with these characters until later. While Swift himself is an interesting guy/sorcerer/etc, his character doesn’t really shine until he makes allies/friends. You see a different side of him asides from his mumbo-jumbo of thoughts. And so for much of the first 40 percent, it was nothing but pages of way too much description over the most mundane of things, and him doing a solo act of sorts until he actually interacts more with others.

So I’ve probably made this book sound really bad. But by the end of it, I was so happy to have continued on. The plot, while not that original (i.e. beat the big baddie), had a great execution. The world building is phenomenal, and the concept of magic was very refreshing and was the palate-cleansing I needed from the books I’ve read prior to this. The characters all had a certain shine to them once you really got to know them and see Swift’s interactions with them.

While I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the sequels, I can say for certain that A Madness of Angels was a very entertaining foray into the magical streets of London.

I feel a little bit conflicted about this book.

The magical mechanics were compelling, and I actually liked the I/we switching and didn't find it confusing (and it was enough to make the slow revelation sensical and not jarring). On the other hand, it was WAY too wordy; while fun enough to read, Griffin's no Hardy or Melville in the descriptive realm. This would've been much more satisfying at 300-400 pages instead of 610. It started interestingly enough, then sort of sagged, but Oda breathed some live and interpersonal conflict into the story and kept me from giving up a third of the way through. If anything, this book was too much plot and not enough characterization and personal interactions, but it got a bit more emotionally compelling towards the end, so I might as well give the second book in the series a good.

All in all, enough interesting magical details to keep me reading, but it made me long for a good character study.