Strange Practice

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. From the cover I thought this was historical urban fantasy, but in fact it's set in modern-day London. It's a fast-paced story about Greta and a group of monsters fighting off and outsmarting a murderous cult and its leader. It's something like a crime thriller, with a lot of action and only a very slight hint of romance.

The book didn't really absorb me until about halfway through, when we finally see Greta alone with some of her regular patients. At that point I understood why she's dedicated to helping monsters, instead of only seeing her complaints about her job. There are several point-of-view characters, including the villains, and I didn't really care much about any of them until then, although they're all intriguing.

I continued on because I wanted to know what would happen with the plot, and I did come to like most of the characters, except for August. He delivers most of the comic relief, in the form of blunt statements, confusion, etc. I guess he's supposed to be a reader stand-in, the guy who is not really a part of this world and has a normal human reaction to all the strangeness. But it's a better book than that - I did feel immersed in the second half and didn't need his perspective. Greta is also a human, and she's the character in the blurb and on the cover. And “monsters are people too” is definitely a theme here, so the other characters' perspectives are never alienating, even when they are alien. Fastitocalon is my favorite character and I love his close friendship with Greta. It's sweet and I feel it works really well as the emotional focus of the story.

Overall I liked this book, and I look forward to reading about these characters having another adventure.

A solid 3.5 star book, which could easily have been a 4+ star book with some tweaks to the writing. And by some tweaks I mean an editor should have sat down and slashed all of the self-conscious and second-guessing asides, and 99% of the qualifiers as well. A little doubt among characters is fine, but the inability of the main characters to make a definite, unqualified sentence was off-putting and distracting. It was too “look at me looking at myself”, which inevitably pulled me out of the story and, indeed, made me look at it. Examples:

“She always felt vaguely as if she ought to be draped in lace and ruffles, or possibly diaphanous peignoirs, whatever they were, in order to live up to the surroundings;” (emphasis in original) - why insert the phrase “whatever they were”, what does this aside add to the story? My suspicion is that the author believes a protagonist who knows about peignoirs will somehow alienate readers, and that the aside is meant to keep Greta “relatable”. Bad writing. Use the word with confidence or just scrap it altogether.

“She would not be the eleventh, if she had any say in the matter” (emphasis in original). This sentence is during a particularly dramatic scene, and comes at the pivotal moment in the action where Greta decides to fight for her life. Why, WHY is this moment diluted by the addition of “if she had any say in the matter”?! If someone has decided to fight off an attacker she is not going to be thinking about how much say she has in the matter, she is going to be thinking of how to survive. I think the author added this aside to show us how plucky our heroine is, but instead it creates a look-at-me-looking-at-myself moment that rings false and takes us right out of the action.

And so on and so forth throughout the book. Again, a good editor would have slashed out all the hedging and left us with a lean story that really zings along, but since that didn't happen we have to ask if the fantastic plot and characters outweigh the weak writing. For me, they did. As I moved through the book I became completely engrossed in the story, hedging asides and all, and I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. Overall, a good read.