★★★★☆ That was fun!

The Masquerades of Spring

Ben Aaronovitch

When you begin Ben Aaronovitch's The Masquerades of Spring, you will immediately recognize the tone as Wodehouseian. (Unless, that is, you have not read Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves books or seen the TV shows based on them. If that's you, do yourself a favor and correct this oversight immediately. I particularly recommend the series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie free on Youtube.) Our narrator Augustus Berrycloth-Young is unmistakably based on Bertie Wooster. A graduate of the magic school at Casterbrook, Gussy is fond of using magic to remove policemen's helmets from policemen's heads, etc.

The action takes place shortly after Gussy's arrival in New York City around 1925. (We know from Aaronovitch's Moment 14 that Gussy traveled to New York in fall, 1925.) The story begins when he is visited by his old schoolmate and our old friend Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale has come to New York to track down the source of certain enchanted musical instruments.

Aside from the historical interest of a story set in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, I was most interested in seeing a young Nightingale. The Nightingale we know as Peter Grant's mentor is a very old man -- well over a hundred years old. He is young and vigorous in body because he's been aging backward for years, but he's a serious man who's been scarred by many tragedies, particularly the fiasco at Ettersberg in World War II.

The Nightingale of Masquerades is unmistakably the man who can single-handedly destroy a main battle tank. But although he is more serious than Gussy, he shows a sense of fun that the older Nightingale represses. We also get a bit more insight into his relationship with Molly.

It's quite a short novella (4 and a half hours in audio), read as usual by the estimable Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who, I am pleased to say, does well with the various New York accents. Highly recommended.

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