A Review By Rebecca at Kenilworth Books

I was very surprised to discover that this had a rather mixed bag of reviews when I looked into it on the Internet. Though many people enjoyed it, a lot of people found the narrative style confusing, the content overdescriptive, and the refrain annoying in its repetition.

At first I wondered whether I was looking at reviews for some other book, because these opinions didn’t match up to my experience of the book at all. A Madness of Angels does live up to its title – protagonist Matthew Swift has a thread of insanity throughout his narrative, which could potentially throw off readers initially. For the first ten or so pages, it can be quite difficult to understand what exactly is going on, but this is mainly because Matthew Swift himself has been thrown into this world as much as the reader has, and this initial confusion gives the book a sort of lurching, stumbling pace that know exactly where it’s going. And once Swift has a grip on himself, it’s clear that the book has had a grip on itself all along.

The portrait of London that Griffin paints is an beautiful, electrifying, foul, dirty, magnificent beast of a city. It’s clear that it’s a place she not only knows well, but loves. Her urban magic is brilliant and original, and most of all, believable. And the haunting, maddening, wonderful song of the electric blue angels that live in the phone lines will stay with the reader for a long while after the book is over.

Come be we and be free.