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Angel Mage by Garth Nix

We are in a reimagined 17th century Europe where something terrible has happened in Ystara (Spain). The inhabitants that survived fled and are now an underclass of ‘refusers’ in Surance (France). They are immune from the angelic powers that act as a sort of power source in the society (angel power is called upon by using icons – this might be for healing, or for building, or for protection, or pretty much anything). Refusers who are touched by angelic magic either die quickly of the ash blood plague or are turned into violent ‘beastlings’. Cardinals who can harness the powers of the highest angels are in charge, along with the Queen. The story revolves around a powerful icon-maker,  Liliath, thought dead a century before, who comes back to life plotting revenge.

Angel Mage references Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and much of the novel revolves around the development and interaction of the four musketeers – Dorotea an icon painter (and based on D’Artagnan), Henri, a clerk, Simeon, a doctor and Agnez, a swashbuckling cadet musketeer. These are great characters, and a lot of fun, but the exposition around them takes up a lot of the book so that we get a lot of banter between them, when they should actually be solving the conundrum around the mysterious Lady Dehiems and what the hell the Night Crew of the refusers are up to. Still, as you would expect of Nix, there is a lot to like here — great world building, a lot of thrills and adventure, romantic entanglements and empathetic characters.

Mr Nix says this is a stand alone novel, but there’s a lot of backgrounding and build up of the main characters, and a complicated and interesting world, so that I’d be pretty surprised if there wasn’t more stories set in ‘Surance and neighbouring states’.

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The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey

The second in Massey’s Perveen Mistry murder mysteries set in 1920’s India (the first was The Widows of Malabar Hill). Perveen is a ‘lady’ lawyer, educated at Oxford after discrimination suffered when trying to undertake her law degree in India (this is explained in Massey’s novella ‘Outnumbered at Oxford’). Perveen is constrained by the mores of the time, including British colonialism, and also by her Parsi background (she can’t, for example, be divorced from her violent estranged husband). But never mind, she can look after herself and take on most people. Here she takes a job mediating between a maharani from a far-flung principality in the hills and the British authorities who have legal care for her son – the maharaja-in-waiting. Perveen gets embroiled in a possible murder investigation when she finds the maharani’s other son was supposedly mauled to death on a hunt in suspicious circumstances. The palace is remote, hard to get to, and hemmed in by mist, and there may be a poisoner at work. There is a suggestion of love interest in the form of Colin Sandrigham – a slightly bitter but companionable British agent living in the picturesque but lonely circuit house where Perveen is put up in bad weather before moving on to the palace (much to her chagrin, Colin is the only one there besides a loyal servant ). Some may find the pace too slow, but I love the detail of the setting and customs as well as Perveen’s self-control and no-nonsense approach. She may not, perhaps, be the action heroine that is now ubiquitous but she’s smart, determined and knows she must work within the constraints that are placed on her.

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The Carer by Deborah Moggach

This is one of those strange books that I thought was fantastic and well-realised for the first two thirds and then annoying, boring and disappointing for the last third. Moggach has some insightful, humorous and poignant things to say about the dilemma middle-aged children have when their parents become frail and elderly. Narrated alternately from the points of view of the siblings Robert and Phoebe – one a well-off aspiring writer in an unhappy marriage and the other a single fiftyish woman living in a village doing unsatisfying artwork and having a casual affair with a guy who lives in a caravan in the woods. The siblings’ mother has died and their ex-scientist Dad (with slight dementia) needs full-time care in the home. Neither one wants to give up their life to do this, so they employ a series of carers. The latest one, Mandy, seems ideal: capable, cheerful and efficient. They think they can sit back and relax but things about Mandy start to worry them, and the reader. So far so enjoyable. Then comes a twist that seemed forced and unlikely to me, and at two thirds of the way through, new (and boring) characters are introduced. Moggach lost me at that point. I didn’t want to read the rest but forced myself to.