[Notes for my friend Mike on Masquerades of Spring from the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch]
Masquerades of Spring
I enjoyed it. Not Aaronovitch's best, but still fun. I liked how we learned just a little bit more about Thomas Nightingale without disclosing too much: so this is why he likes jazz.
One of the features of first person story-telling is that you have a relationship with the narrator. I recognise that I don't particularly like Gussie.
The story is written as pastiche PG Wodehouse, with Gussie as Bertie Wooster and Beauregard as Jeeves. Gussie doesn't appeal to me as a person but I don't dislike him.
It strikes me that Gussie is actually smarter than he acts (or he himself realises) but he has learned to be stupid or helpless because he's lazy and it allows him to stand back and let other people do the work - because he can.
I thought that Beauregard was underused as a character. There's more potential there if Aaronovitch choses to use it.
The story is classic McGuffin. We never encounter the magic saxophone and the magic trumpet is returned to the villain Jaeger without doing anything more than "a queer sort of harmonic buzz at the words 'let it out'" (p58). We never really learn much about the instruments, except that they
are a distress signal from Maurelle. Nor do we learn how Maurelle is imprisoned. We know it is because of her daughter Oriande, and we learn that Jaeger is exploiting Maurelle's power. We don't know how someone as powerful as Maurelle can apparently be controlled so easily.
All this is actually quite clever. We make up our own partial explanations and we are always left wanting for more.
Talking of "wanting for more", there are some good peripheral/tangential details about Nightingale. IMO we will never learn much about Nightingale.
He's a stock character, the man of mystery. He will remain: a superman with flaws, the last of his kind. In the main sequence he has (well managed)
PTSD as a result of what happened at Ettersburg.
The new details I like are that Gussie secretly fancies Nightingale ("I might have thought the situation has romantic possibilities" (p47)).
Gussie is also jealous of Nightingale, especially that Nightingale fancy Lucy ("I am not by nature a violent man..." (p41)). Nightingale is, of course, sexless - that is the nature of the stock character.
Another detail hinted at is the nature of Nightingale's relationship with Molly. We aren't told what it is, except that it is strong enough to make Nightingale drop what he is doing, risk censure from The Folly and cross the Atlantic.
Gussie is sufficiently stupid that he hasn't twigged that he has been set up with Beauregard. It takes him a while to appreciate that Cocoa/Amelia is more than just a pretty girl - he clearly doesn't appreciate how powerful she probably is.
There are some nice hooks into "The Virginia Company" and whatever magic there is in New Orleans. It would seem that The Queen of Joy, Beauregard, Cocoa and the midwives are all part of something.
Artistically, Aaronovitch may be using the novellas to give himself space away from the flow of the main series. The novella's introduce and explore new characters. He's also experimenting with different writing voices for the new narrators. If Masquerades of Spring was PG Wodehouse, then I think (not sure) that Winter's Gift's was Stephen King.
Out of universe, commercially the novella's provide an increased flow of product and Aaronovitch may be using them to fish for something from Hollywood.
And... Masquerade is being played for laughs more than usual, with Gussie cast as clown: note the spells "Crocker" (felt up and stripped of clothes (p149)) and "Treaclefoot" (p53).
Some good throwaway bits:
"Are you a fairy? My mama is a fairy" (p137) and Nightingale in drag (of course he looks good).
Not the best, but good fun.
