Alex Verus, Books 3-12
4.0 Stars
2-28-2022
"He turned me into a Djinn!"
"A Djinn?"
"I got better."
(trust me, in the context of the stories this is *very* funny)
There's a lot to like in these books. The most general, positive thing I can say is that this is a book series where you have a "coming down" period after reading it, as you make the adjustment from the world that the author has created back to our own reality. The main character's magic is that he is a Diviner, and is able to flip through possible, near-term futures. This is such an amazing comfort blanket. It's not that the protagonist cannot be killed, but his awareness of danger does give him a layer of foresight and security that obviously we don' have in real life. The author even plays around with this at a few points, where the main character's abilities are disabled/subverted, and how terrifying and crippling it is for him to not be able to constantly look ahead to see the effects of his actions. This makes a lot of sense! The author doesn't go super-super deep into the psychology that the protagonist's magic would create, but he does touch upon some of the main issues that could come up, e.g. the difficulty of going to sleep, since it means giving up this protective cloud of possibilities & awareness of danger and becoming vulnerable.
Other positive things: the books have a nice ensemble cast, and I appreciate that the author gives these secondary character the freedom to grow, change, leave, and occasionally die. E.g. Luna starts off as a miserable stick in the mud, before gradually blossoming into a jaunty & self-directed asshole. Varium starts off as a confrontational asshole with a heart of gold, and then continues being exactly that. Etc. etc. The villains are also well chosen, with a variety of different archetypes and levels of fucked-upness. Particular credit goes to the big bad, who spends the vast, vast, vast majority of his time calmly talking, questioning, debating, and negotiating with people. Ok, the other 2% of the time is ultra-violence, but it's still a very different villain than you usually get in fantasy stories.
On the negative side, I think the book hits a few story beats a few too many times (e.g. the Alex-Council conflict, though that does have a nice eventual pay off). Also, the general world building makes even less sense than usual for an urban-fantasy novel, and you just have to accept that there's this weird little world of murder wizards that is somehow adjacent to the more normal modern world. Also, the book sort of assumes the continued importance of Britain to the world, when really even if the worse case happened and all of the characters died, the wizards over in India or China or wherever could just come over and clean things up over the course of a long weekend. Also, Tallis gets hit with the idiot ball pretty hard in the later books, which is unfortunate since he was an early favorite. Also, the psychology & metaphysics of Anne was, uhh, pretty unrealistic, but whatever, that's a big load bearing part of the story so I guess we'll just roll with it.