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Jun. 13th, 2019 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThere's hurt/comfort that leans hard into the 'hurt' and hurt/comfort that leans hard into the 'comfort' and Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice is VERY MUCH the latter -- it's definitely a very warm bubble bath of an urban fantasy.
The plot: Dr. Greta Helsing (great-granddaughter of Dracula's Van Helsing, of course) is a specialist underground doctor for maligned supernatural creatures, and also, because this is an urban fantasy novel and we have rules about the plots for this sort of thing, there is a cult on the loose murdering maligned supernatural creatures!
As a result, Greta and some pals end up hanging out in a house together while they sort out the cult problem; aforementioned pals read like the cast of the absolute softest version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, including:
Lord Ruthven from Polidori's The Vampyre, here portrayed as a sweet, distinguished vampire dandy
Varney from Varney the Vampyre, here portrayed as a sweet but desperately emo pile of sad vampire angst
Fastitocalon, a sweet, fatherly supernatural creature of mysterious provenance, who does not appear to have a literary antecedent as far as I can tell except in a JRR Tolkien poem about a turtle?
August Cranswell, a sweet museum curator who is not at all supernatural but is also being targeted by the cult for ... honestly, I have no idea why he's being targeted by the cult, I think Shaw just needed a way to get him into the house to hang out with everyone else
Anyway, everyone is constantly getting into just enough peril that they can get back to the house and be fussed over and told they need to eat better and given soup and brandy; Greta and August also call out of work for the duration to hunt the evil serial killing cultists, despite the fact that there is really nothing in either of their job descriptions that qualifies them for hunting evil serial killing cultists at all. I was actually a little bit disappointed by this, because if one is going to read an urban fantasy about a supernatural doctor, I would rather the plot be more focused on her doing actual doctoring. She doesn't have to take off work to investigate the mysteries of evil serial killing cultists! There are approximately two dozen other urban fantasy heroines in London who can and do tackle that as their actual urban fantasy heroine jobs!
(I also wish there had been a few more women in the plot; Greta has some friends who help her out with the clinic, but they're almost entirely offscreen.)
On the other hand, I did appreciate that after fighting off a murderous cultist, Greta promptly brought him back to the house for soup and brandy and fussing as well; I appreciate, in general, the background thesis that life is important and people of all sorts are worth fixing. It's a very kind book, overall - not a book with a lot of sharp edges, but a good book to read on a day when you feel like seeing a lot of nice people be kind to each other. While avoiding getting murdered by a serial killing cult.
The plot: Dr. Greta Helsing (great-granddaughter of Dracula's Van Helsing, of course) is a specialist underground doctor for maligned supernatural creatures, and also, because this is an urban fantasy novel and we have rules about the plots for this sort of thing, there is a cult on the loose murdering maligned supernatural creatures!
As a result, Greta and some pals end up hanging out in a house together while they sort out the cult problem; aforementioned pals read like the cast of the absolute softest version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, including:
Lord Ruthven from Polidori's The Vampyre, here portrayed as a sweet, distinguished vampire dandy
Varney from Varney the Vampyre, here portrayed as a sweet but desperately emo pile of sad vampire angst
Fastitocalon, a sweet, fatherly supernatural creature of mysterious provenance, who does not appear to have a literary antecedent as far as I can tell except in a JRR Tolkien poem about a turtle?
August Cranswell, a sweet museum curator who is not at all supernatural but is also being targeted by the cult for ... honestly, I have no idea why he's being targeted by the cult, I think Shaw just needed a way to get him into the house to hang out with everyone else
Anyway, everyone is constantly getting into just enough peril that they can get back to the house and be fussed over and told they need to eat better and given soup and brandy; Greta and August also call out of work for the duration to hunt the evil serial killing cultists, despite the fact that there is really nothing in either of their job descriptions that qualifies them for hunting evil serial killing cultists at all. I was actually a little bit disappointed by this, because if one is going to read an urban fantasy about a supernatural doctor, I would rather the plot be more focused on her doing actual doctoring. She doesn't have to take off work to investigate the mysteries of evil serial killing cultists! There are approximately two dozen other urban fantasy heroines in London who can and do tackle that as their actual urban fantasy heroine jobs!
(I also wish there had been a few more women in the plot; Greta has some friends who help her out with the clinic, but they're almost entirely offscreen.)
On the other hand, I did appreciate that after fighting off a murderous cultist, Greta promptly brought him back to the house for soup and brandy and fussing as well; I appreciate, in general, the background thesis that life is important and people of all sorts are worth fixing. It's a very kind book, overall - not a book with a lot of sharp edges, but a good book to read on a day when you feel like seeing a lot of nice people be kind to each other. While avoiding getting murdered by a serial killing cult.
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Date: 2019-06-14 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-14 11:21 pm (UTC)