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July is always a loss but this one especially needs a do-over. So I abandoned all plans and started rereading my favourite Matthew Price, The Minority Council. As Kara has said, like the whole series it's a postcard/ love letter to London. And as I was reading Matthew casting his gaze over the sweep of the small-c city, it occurred to me (possibly a bit belatedly) that I really don't *like* London myself.
As a purely narrative construct, it's fine as the source of Griffin/ Matthew's akogare, but approaching it as a place I know (or rather, knew)-- err, really, what are you on about? Cold, grubby, and much more Houseman's version
than Dr Johnson's (which was colder and grubbier and much more violent, let us not forget.) Even the physical city doesn't come across as friendly or consoling or indeed anything but obstructive. Maybe you have to live there for the 'we are all Londoners' spell to work.
(Of course I felt a bit differently in the 60s and early 70s, between the lingering atmosphere of the war years and the lingering romance of the British Invasion. The grubbiness and tackiness was a badge of honour. 'That's *historical* dirt!' Since Thatcher, though... mh, no. Concrete and steel is the same everywhere; and the human side is not improved by it.)
New York I can see as the source of this kind of emotion. Paris perhaps, in spite of the inhabitants. Tokyo I might do myself, though I still wonder how Tokyo's magic works for the Tokyoites, not the foreign observer's.
As a purely narrative construct, it's fine as the source of Griffin/ Matthew's akogare, but approaching it as a place I know (or rather, knew)-- err, really, what are you on about? Cold, grubby, and much more Houseman's version
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another's care
than Dr Johnson's (which was colder and grubbier and much more violent, let us not forget.) Even the physical city doesn't come across as friendly or consoling or indeed anything but obstructive. Maybe you have to live there for the 'we are all Londoners' spell to work.
(Of course I felt a bit differently in the 60s and early 70s, between the lingering atmosphere of the war years and the lingering romance of the British Invasion. The grubbiness and tackiness was a badge of honour. 'That's *historical* dirt!' Since Thatcher, though... mh, no. Concrete and steel is the same everywhere; and the human side is not improved by it.)
New York I can see as the source of this kind of emotion. Paris perhaps, in spite of the inhabitants. Tokyo I might do myself, though I still wonder how Tokyo's magic works for the Tokyoites, not the foreign observer's.
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Definitely. I suppose he was like that even before he became the Angels, but letting those entities see the whole shebang certainly didn't help his glossolalia.
Paris: See, I wonder how magic works in orderly unmessy cities. Higglety-pigglety just-grew London we know about, because Matthew tells us, but a place where the citizens pride themselves on their (slightly constipated IMHO) rationality, and the re-engineered boulevards agree with them-- mh. But maybe the banlieues of Paris act the same way as the suburbs of London, and maybe something remembers the Parisians' periodic descents into mass insanity. Or maybe the magic does strict Cartesian mode until it suddenly goes wild without warning.
The oddity to my mind is that Aaronovitch has a clearer sense of the past hanging in than Griffin does-- as in what makes Fleet and Lady Ty the way they are. Matthew is so much present-day London that the bits that depend on the past don't quite come off for me. The wall, the Tower ravens-- stuff like that.
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re: Aaronovitch -- I think he planned his London out more explicitly. Whereas some other people just pants their way to a plot, I feel like he sat down and made a spreadsheet. The kind of mind that sets Newtonian magic center stage is probably the kind of mind that gets everything clear, and does not rely on handwavium. I like my magic systems to be as free of BS as possible, and boy does he ever deliver. <3
(Not that I couldn't come up with explanations for Griffin's magic bits if you were holding a gun to my head, but yanno. I'd rather not have to.)