The blurb sounded so good. So good. The execution...nope. Not only was the language stilted English from the Victorian era which makes it super slow to read, but the author threw concepts into the story without explaining them.
Furthermore - a Sherlock Holmes retelling (not mentioned in the blurb) that was just that, a retelling without any novel ideas. The supernatural beings are just thrown in there like furniture, not really giving the story a spin. I'm so bummed.

Summary: In a fantastical 1800’s London, the iconic stories of Sherlock Holmes are re-imagined with Crow, an angel and freelance detective who wards over the streets of London, deducing his way through one puzzling case after another. With the help of his partner and flatmate Dr. J. H. Doyle, an Army surgeon turned hell-hound, Crow must navigate a city inhabited with vampires, werewolves, and even Jack the Ripper if he wants to crack the case. With some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous mysteries on the line, including “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “The Adventure of Speckled Band”, and “The Sign of the Four”, the pair will soon learn that if they eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

To many readers and writers, there exists a line that clearly separates the worlds of fiction and fanfiction—but don’t try and tell Katherine Addison that. The Angel of the Crows, her ambitious, fantastical ode to Sherlock Holmes, has put forth a great deal of effort to blur this line, creating an engaging story that, while standing on its own two feet, borrows heavily—and unapologetically—from an already rich universe filled with its own fanbase, lore, and presumptions. It’s dangerous ground that Addison walks, as I’m sure many loyal Sherlock Holmes fans would agree, but that doesn’t make the novel any less engaging or worthy of reading. With its colorful, fleshed-out world, cleverly interwoven mysteries, and perky Sherlock charm, fans and newbies alike are sure to find value in this new interpretation.

It is where The Angel of the Crows steps away from the classics, though, that it shines the brightest. Watching vampires and hellhounds at home in Victorian England is a great deal of fun, but it’s the novel’s treatment of gender roles, fluidity, and identity that makes it a striking example of contemporary fantasy. Tucked away in this seemingly superficial story lies a very compelling facet that single-handedly pushes the stuffy, antiquated character builds of the 19th century out the door and makes way for the kind of strong leads we both want and need in today’s world. Without giving away too much, it is safe to say that the archetypes left aging in the corner by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been revitalized in the best way possible, giving Katherine Addison agency when it comes to how future generations will view the evolution of Sherlock Holmes in popular culture.

Verdict:

Baker street is alive and well in this fantasy driven, fanfiction-esque look at one of the most popular literary characters the world has ever seen. Whether coming into The Angel of the Crows as a diehard fan of the original series and adaptations, or just as a new reader looking for a mystery novel that has been cleverly woven into a supernatural setting, it is clear that Katherine Addison has us all exclaiming, yet again, that the game is afoot!

More reviews available at www.blindcornermagazine.com

What if Sherlock Holmes were an angel? What if he and and Dr. Watson were both hiding secrets that make living in an alternate 1880s London difficult?

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and paranormal creatures—including vampires, werewolves, and hellhounds—share the streets with humans in a tenuous truce. There is a mythos built around angels and other paranormal creatures, reminiscent but not exactly the same as the traditional creatures we know. These creatures, who but for their paranormal abilities seem human in nature, suffer discrimination under the Registration Act, which requires them to identify themselves to the government, but which it difficult to get certain jobs. As a result, many choose not to register themselves despite legal consequences.

As private investigator, Crow acts as the self-proclaimed Angel of London. (Why he’s not attached to a specific building is one of the mysteries of this book.) Civilians and police alike come to him for aid in deciphering mysteries and crimes. His new flatmate, Dr. J.H. Doyle, a former military doctor and the POV character, provides another perspective to cases. The book is made up of nine parts, each of which I’m guessing includes a Sherlock Holmes case retold. (I’m not certain since The Hound of the Baskervilles retelling was the only one that I recognized.) I enjoyed reading the stories that I didn’t recognize, but THotB retelling so closely follows the original that the story lost its charm for me. The strong parallels to the original text may be due to the book’s origins as a Sherlock Holmes wingfic, a sub-genre of fan fiction in which one or more characters has wings (source: Author’s Note). These stories are interconnected by the common thread of Doyle’s struggles adapting to life after the war and the mystery of the “Jack the Ripper” serial killings.

The style of writing has an a older feel appropriate for a Sherlock Holmes retelling. While this book is a retelling, it includes a contemporary examination of women’s roles in a patriarchal society. The difficulties of life as a women are shown through one of the main characters, the case of Jack the Ripper (who Doyle speculates, based on observations of the crime scenes, has something against women), the vampires’ matriarchal system, and the mistreatment of women. The book also explores human nature through the crimes committed, through Crow and Doyle’s relationship and through their conversations—as an Angel, Crow cannot empathize with human emotions and behavior, but he is curious about humans. His commentary provides an outside perspective on human nature.

There are a few things that I wish the book explored in more depth: the mythos, especially the nature of angels and vampires (What role do the Fallen play in this world? What are the negative consequences of getting marked by a vampire?), the bad blood between Crow and Moriarity (what history do these two characters have?), the second serial killer (do they ever catch this person?).

I recommend this book to readers who enjoy urban fantasy / crime novels with a historical setting. I would not recommend this book if you’re looking for an original work. As the author mentions, this book started as a Sherlock Holmes fan fiction, and from what I can tell, the cases closely parallel the original stories.

The worst feeling is when the second half of a book ruins the first half. That was my experience reading The Angel of the Crows. The opening showed such promise: the world-building around a supernatural London with citizens including angels, vampires, hell-hounds, and more. There was a kind of society structured around these things, and the chemistry between Dr. Doyle (Watson) and Crow (Sherlock Holmes).

The interestingness of this book ends there and, in fact, veers into the territory of weird and boring, veering into problematic. Addison introduced the different heirarchies of angels and it almost seemed important until you realized that the book didn't care. There is a subplot about registered and unregistered shifters. This also gets unexplored.

Before I get into specifics, I think the missed opportunity here was that the book seemed more interested in transcribing the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and the murders of Jack the Ripper than it was in exploring the new details. It could have continued being fun. If it wanted to be queer, it could have just had a male Sherlock and a male Watson kiss (or whatever the time-period-appropriate sign of affection was). That was decidedly not the route it took.

Now for all the missed opportunities:
* Dr. Doyle is a woman dressing up as a man. This is never explored and only comes up one more time
* Crow is an angel. All angels are asexual. This could have been fine if it just so happened that Crow was ace as a character trait, but that's not what we saw here.
* All angels are female. Crow chose a male name and male identity. This is never explored.
* All non-English characters are caricatures. The Indian character is introduced as wearing a turban and smoking hookah. The undocumented Russian woman is also a medium. The final act uses the g-slur for Romani people. There is some anti-Semitism that doesn't get challenged.
* Moriarty is in the book and his name is not changed. He just happens to be a vampire. That's as far as that goes.
* The sex workers murdered by Jack the Ripper remain dehumanized, as is common in such retellings

Unfortunately, like others I've seen, I was unable to really connect with this book. I was expecting a fresh new story and was disappointed to read a rehash of Sherlock Holmes stories that I was already familiar with. Addison definitely puts a fun twist on the stories, but overall this wasn't for me.

Well that third sentence of the summary is definitely true, ‘This is not the book you are expecting’. This was so much more of a mystery/detective story then I thought!
In the first 20% of this book we only meet one Angel, and there is no mention of any werewolves or vampires. So I can’t imagine them being such a big part of the book..!
This book was just really not for me! I was not connecting with the writing nor the characters or the plot. The main character, Mr Doyle, felt very flat to me. He wasn’t interesting at all in those first 20%. I think we were supposed to be curious about The angel of the crows, and what he was and what is role was. But I just wasn’t.
I’m still kinda curious what Jack the Ripper’s role is in this book, I have some guesses, but it wasn’t enough to pull me through the book!
I think this can be a good book for some readers, especially if you like the combination of fantasy and mystery, it was just not for me!

I enjoyed this but found with the amount of characters thrown at you it became a bit confusing at times and the focus is drawn away from the main character too often, which is a big mistake. The main problem I had is that the stories felt flat and uninspired, I know these stories too well anthers was nothing exceptional to make it feel new or to connect me with the story more and make it feel original. The universe was interesting and the writing good, but just fell a bit flat for me even if it was a nice read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

The Angel of the Crows is Sherlock Holmes fanfic … if Sherlock were an outcast angel called Crow, Dr. Watson (here named Dr. Doyle) had a paranormal affliction caused by an injury given him by an Afghani fallen angel, and Victorian England were filled with vampires, werewolves and other paranormal beings. In fact, Katherine Addison states in an author’s note at the end that The Angel of the Crows originated as Sherlock wingfic, a type of fanfic in which one or more characters have wings. It’s an idea with potential, but Katherine Addison squanders that potential by spending (I estimate) some eighty percent of the novel simply retelling several of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous adventures with a supernatural twist.

It begins immediately with the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, in which Holmes and Watson (Crow and Doyle) first meet and become flatmates, and works its way through four more adventures that will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s read many of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. The least well-known one is “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” and that one would only be called obscure by a non-Holmes fan. The framing device for all of this is the search for Jack the Ripper: his murders are happening right while everything else is going on. Crow and Dr. Doyle can’t help but be interested, and interest leads to involvement.

It’s a reasonably interesting novel, even if you’re familiar with the source material, and Addison clearly did quite a bit of research into the Sherlock Holmes canon and Victorian-era crime, with a focus on the Jack the Ripper cases. But I found myself earnestly wishing that Addison had written a more original novel. In The Angel of the Crows, proper angels are tied to a habitation, like a cathedral or even an inn; Fallen angels cause disasters on the level of bombs; Nameless angels have lost their individual identity and their will along with their habitation. Crow is none of these, unique among angels. All this is explained as part of the background and world-building, but Addison never delves deeply into this aspect of the story or unlocks the potential of conflict with Fallen angels. Focusing more on these original ideas would have made for a more compelling novel.

The first adventure of Crow and Doyle, based on A Study in Scarlet, took up the whole first fifth of this novel, and was such a straight retelling of the original (at least, the London-based half of the original) that my jaw was literally dropping by the end of it. The Angel of the Crows does get progressively more creative as it goes along, as Addison includes more twists to the plots of the original Holmes stories. Occasionally an unexpected connection would make me laugh, like this one:

“Introductions!” the vampire said briskly. “My name is Moriarty.”

“Doyle,” I said and, having observed the vampire’s long, curved nails, did not offer to shake hands.

I appreciated Addison’s spin on The Hound of the Baskervilles plot, and she also gave most of the racist, sexist and other outdated parts of Doyle’s stories a much more modern spin. Even gender identity come into play, which would probably make old Arthur roll in his grave. Unlike Bill, I found myself gradually getting more invested in the story as I got deeper into it, rather than less.

Still, for readers who are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories that Addison wove into this novel, much of the element of mystery and surprise will be lost. I agree heartily with Bill’s conclusion that Addison should have done much more to transform and subvert the original Holmes stories. I found myself looking forward to the interim chapters about Jack the Ripper, since those events were less familiar to me. Coming from the author who wrote the inventive book The Goblin Emperor, The Angel of the Crows was a bit of letdown.

I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw who wrote it, as "The Goblin Emperor" was an extraordinary read and I also loved the series "Doctrine of labyrinths", wrote under the name of Sarah Monette, the other author's publishing names. The fact that I was quite interested by the book's themes also helped.

As usual in the author's books, the story was very easy and confortable to read, with good dialogues, splendid characters and touches of mysteries about them. What I liked less maybe is the adaptation of the story of Jack the Ripper, and others Sherlock Holmes ones, I'd have preferred an original detective story. But fortunately the angel theme, thoroughly used and imagined, was quite enough to make for it!

To conclude a very good read, and I really hope that a sequel is to be expected, particularly as I'm not sure about some things about Watson and will love some personal development!

I love Sherlock Holmes and I am a huge fan of Holmes reimagined (there are some very good ones out there). This is fun but too respectful in my opinion. The world around the story has been complicated by being peopled with all kinds of fantastical creatures: angels, vampires, hellhounds, etc. It's pretty cool but then the story itself is a retelling of some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's actual plots. The Holmes character keeps getting shoved aside in too many of these plots, which is always a mistake. Not a bad book, but not as great as I expected it to be.

So. This is an alternate-history Sherlock Holmes retelling with angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, and so on and so forth, written by the author of The Goblin Emperor. That as a sentence alone had me running full force into this book with glee.

The ‘Sherlock’ in this one is an angel named Crow. Angels in this world inhabit every public building and act as… a sort of protector. Crow is a little different in that his building doesn’t exist anymore, per sey. Most angels in this situation would Fall (which I understood to mean ‘blows up into pure evil,’ though this isn’t expanded on very much) but Crow has managed to circumvent that outcome and become a sort of… freelance angel. He helps the police solve crimes where he can.

We get this story from the POV of Doyle, who is our ‘Watson’. He is back from the war, having been injured by a Fallen, which has greater repercussions than just the fact that his leg is injured and he walks with a cane. Doyle ends up renting a flat with Crow and they become partners in crime… solving? As you would have guessed. 😀

This one more or less reads like a few short stories or novellas that come together as one to tell a bigger story. The prose is quite lovely, and I really enjoyed some of the characters, most especially Crow.

Which makes it a little unfortunate really that I just… didn’t love this one. I liked it fairly well, I just found myself having a harder and harder time staying interested in it as it went along.

Doyle tells the story well enough, but he’s not very interesting most of the time. Given a few different points of fact about him, he should be very interesting indeed, but he just seemed… rather flat. Crow stole the show here, as one would expect.

All told, it was interesting, at times, and I never found myself disliking it, but I never found myself in love with it either. I have really enjoyed books from this author before, both under a pseudonym and not, and so I’m really hoping that this one is just an… isolated bounce-off.

Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper crossover, that's what I'll tell you if you asked me about The Angel of the Crows. On the one hand, being a fan of true crime, I was drawn to the synopsis of the book with the intrigue of Jack the Ripper in an urban fantasy setting in London. And on the other hand, I am an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes (mostly the tv series with Benedict Cumberbatch and the movie with Robert Downey Jr.) and so The Angel of the Crows sounded like my cup of black steaming cup of coffee.

And that it was, this book was a perfect blend of the unsolved murders of Jack the Ripper and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with a dash of Angelic creatures, werewolves, vampires, and more. Katherine Addison's writing style was appropriate to the setting, and the characters were very reminiscent of the inspiration, albeit slightly different. There was the matter of the pacing being abit slow at times, personally wanted things to move along quicker. And there were moments when the plot felt quite lost too.

She gave a good depiction of the horrors of Jack the Ripper and the sleuthing styles of Sherlock and Dr. Watson. The characters, Dr. Doyle was somewhat like Dr. Watson, and Crow was also eccentric, but a slightly friendlier than Sherlock. And that is where I had a slight problem. The story felt strongly of a Sherlock fanfic for the most part because they mirror the references too much. But, that maybe just a personal preference. I understand that there was an element of a retelling, but I wish there was a little bit more imaginative twist to the characters.

Overall, there were moments where I was hopeful that this book would surprise or delight me, I wanted a little more charm. It satisfied the story of Jack the Ripper, being in Victorian London and the witty ways of Sherlock Holmes, but I imagined that Baker Street would have been a little more this time around.

The Angel of Crows is essentially Sherlock Holmes fanfic with some different names substituted in and a few other minor changes to add a supernatural twist, and while I’m not a big fan of Sherlock, I still found I enjoyed the novelty. It’s a great balance of kooky and gritty, and while I was more interested in the latter aspect, given I was interested in how Jack the Ripper fit in, I still found it a fairly solid book that somewhat logically fits together.

I love the relationship between Crow and Doyle, and how it pays homage to Sherlock and Watson (which is obvious even to someone with only the bare minimum of Sherlock knowledge). I’ve heard about Sherlock’s awkwardness with others, and seen it manifest differently in another adaptation, but I think it’s well done here by having Crow be an angel who really doesn’t understand humans.

As for the Ripper element, I enjoyed the way it was interspersed into the more traditional Sherlock stuff, and attempted to provide conclusions to one of the most notorious cold cases in history.

I personally enjoyed it for what it is, even though I did feel like it was a bit odd at times. I think fans of Sherlock would also love it, as would anyone interested in fun steampunk-esque mysteries.

Copy provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review.

So I, like everyone, have been waiting for a new Addison book for a fairly long time. Just a little. Honestly, I was expecting a Goblin Emperor sequel, and while this wasn't it, I'm still pretty happy with what I read.

The Angel of the Crows is a riff of Sherlock Holmes (at this point, I really must point out, I've never read Holmes. I'm familiar with titles, the movies, aaaand that's about it). You have Crow as Holmes, and Doyle as Watson, and they go around solving crimes that the police can not. Jack the Ripper, Hound of the Baskervilles, there's probably a few more references to the OG thrown in that I'm not aware of. However, this is fantasy-mystery, so we get the added benefit of having more or less the full run of the occult spread throughout the story. Crow is an Angel, a creature that needs a name and a habitat to exist as they are, and Doyle has a dark secret brought home from the wars in Afghanistan. Then you have various werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and more springing in and out of the story.

I really enjoyed the style that it was written in, but I'm aware that there are many who might find the lack of overarching narrative a bit of a turn off. The story is made up of several different cases, leaping from one to another over the course of several months. C and D grow closer, and while C may be a bit too straight to the point at times, there are moments of quality banter between the two. As far as other characters go, no one is ever really given the screen time to develop, we jump from one mystery to the next, introducing new faces, and rarely seeing old. It feels like a slightly
stylistic choice.

If I compare it to GE, it doesn't reach that height of enjoyment, and I'm aware that it's unfair to compare a work that we hold so beloved. But looking at the two, I feel the only thing that took away enjoyment was the pacing of the novel; there was so so much covered in it. So many mini stories, and I feel that if one or two had been removed, and the others expanded, it might have made for a tighter book. And we might have gotten a few more developed characters. But, at the end of the day, that's really not a huge complaint for me.

Overall, something I feel happy to recommend, just with a few caveats so that people know what they're getting when they jump in. I certainly feel like reading more fantasy mystery novels now!

When I read the synopsis, I was immediately intrigued. It’s hard to resist the mix of fantastic creatures, London in 1880 and Jack the Ripper! I couldn’t wait to see what the author would come up with!

We follow more particularly two characters in this story, an angel named Crow and Doyle, an investigator. Both of them will embark on a story that goes beyond them to find the terrible killer in town. It won’t be easy, but they’ll be determined to find out what’s going on.

I was, as I said, very intrigued by this story, but I finally had a little trouble hanging on. It’s a pity because the universe was very interesting and I was curious to see the outcome.

Yes, it was a nice novel to discover, even if I thought I would connect more to the story.

Just wow!!! I've been a fan of the author's for over ten years. You think it's going to be another version of Sherlock Holmes, but it's much, much more. Lots of twists. Once I finished it, I started again immediatelyl

For about the first third or perhaps half of Katherine Addison’s newest, Angel of the Crows, was thinking I was finally off the schneide, as it had been about two weeks since I’d really thoroughly enjoyed a novel I was reading. And I was definitely enjoying the pastiche of several Sherlock Holmes stories which basically boils down to “It’s Holmes but with angels and vampires!” Which sounds like a lot of fun, and as noted, it was, at least for that first third or so. But then, well, it never really went anywhere beyond “It’s Holmes but with angels and vampires!” and after about the halfway point my enjoyment began to falter, the story began to sag, and by the end I was left feeling that a neat idea for a short story or novella had been stretched too thin and flat to bear the weight of a full novel.

Which isn’t maybe all that surprising, since the structure of the novel is basically a loose string of retellings of classic Holmes tales, such as “The Sign of the Four,” “The Speckled Band,” and “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” All set in an alternate London where paranormal creatures are part of the mundane fabric of life: angels, vampires, hell hounds, ghosts, clairvoyants, etc. Addison makes a few other changes as well. Holmes is transformed into the angel Crow — who sits somewhat awkwardly between a “normal” angel, a “Nameless”, and a “Fallen” — while Watson becomes Dr. Doyle (see what she’s doing there?) though there’s a bit more to the character than meets the eye.

The two best parts of Angel of the Crows are the world-building and the voice. The most fascinating aspect is the mythology of the angels, which Addison quite deftly doles out a little at a time in expert fashion. The vampiric background is nearly as fascinating and is explained in similarly stretched out fashion. I wouldn’t have at all minded reading much more about either group. The paranormal element also feels wholly baked into the culture and story, so that we see it even when it doesn’t move plot forward. In fact, it’s that we see it especially when it isn’t moving plot that makes it so good, because it doesn’t feel like an artificial way to push narrative necessities. For instance, Doyle makes use of a simile that refers to the paranormal, and the way that world aspect has become attached to simple daily language usage is one of the ways Addison makes us feel it’s a natural part of this world.

The other strong point as mentioned was Doyle’s voice, which felt at first fresh and engaging and which carried me along quite effortlessly through that first half. But then it began to peter out somewhat (not helped by a long epistolary section which I didn’t think was very successful) and fell victim to the flatness and familiarity of the stories themselves.

And therein lies the biggest weakness of Angel of the Crows. The unexpected paranormal aspect adds a nice patina of freshness to the old stories, but it only goes so far. Eventually you realize you’re basically reading the old stories which basically creates two problems. One is that you know pretty much what’s happening and you have a strong sense of having read this all before (granted, slightly changed here via the supernatural elements). The second problem is that the old stories, while popular in their time, don’t really, I’d say fulfill the needs of the modern reader. They’re pretty straightforward without a lot of bends or turns or unexpected twists and the same holds true here as well. In one story, Doyle performs an autopsy on a victim, figures out immediately that it was murder, and the murderer is dealt with just as immediately. It’s about as flat a presentation of murderous intent as I can imagine.

Meanwhile, the Holmes stories are interwoven with Crow and Doyle’s attempts to solve the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel. But that whole subplot feels scattered, shoehorned in, and ends in a disappointingly anticlimactic fashion. Holmes (“Crow”) and Jack have met up several times in fiction and film to far better effect.

In the end, Addison felt less inspired by the Holmes stories and more constricted by them. With the underlying mythology being so rich, and the character of Crow potentially so, Angel of the Crows felt like a missed opportunity. The novelty of the supernatural overlay worked over the span of a story or two, but got pushed past the breaking point by about the halfway point, with the end result being that I found myself wishing for Addison to have been a lot more playful and subversive

How do write a follow up to the amazing Goblin Emperor, you write fan fiction.

The Angel of the Crows is Katherine Addison’s fanfic homage to Sherlock Holmes. Think Sherlock Holmes as an outcast Angel called Crow, Dr Watson has been renamed, Dr Doyle. The setting is still Victorian London, except it is filled with vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures. From this point we get a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes tales, okay idea if you’ve never read them before, the only difference being that the adventures just have a slight supernatural twist. If you’re already familiar with the Holmes tale, this feels like a slight let down.

There were, however, plenty of twists in this story, as Addison shines a light and asks questions on racism, and sexism, gender identities, all done in a respectful way to the original stories. There is a plot that binds all this together and that is Jack the Ripper, this plot pulls you along and keeps your interest.

You can certainly tell that Addison loves the subject matter, this comes across very strongly, however, this just wasn’t enough for me. Addison just about did enough in this story to keep me reading to the end. However, my over-familiarity with the Holmes stories added a slight edge of disappointment.

I would have preferred an original story. I think that for anyone not familiar with the original Sherlock Holmes stories will absolutely love this book.

I received a free digital copy of this book from Tor books and through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for sending me an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review!

First things first, it is important to know that The Angel of Crows started life as a Sherlock Holmes fanfic, specifically wingfic (fanfiction where characters are reimagined with wings)(thank you, author note for explaining this to me).

Second, it is important to know that I loved it!

I am not a die-hard Holmes fan, but have encountered many a Holmes retelling, and have enjoyed them all. This, though, is my favorite of the bunch!

For this re-imagining, Holmes is Crow, an asexual angel, who is deeply kind and full of wonder, and has given himself the mission of solving mystery's in London, as a way to watch over his flock. (All angels in this world need a place/people to watch over, to give them their name and purpose, and keep them from falling). Watson is Doyle, a doctor, and former military person, who has come home from the wars with mobility challenges and a mysterious condition. They begin rooming together, and develop a tender and heartwarming friendship as they solve a series of mysteries alongside the London police. An overarching mystery that spans the book is that of Jack the Ripper.

Things to know

-This book feels a bit like a series of short stories, with each section focusing on a reimagining of on of the classic Holmes stories.

- In many ways, the re-imaginings stick very closely to the original stories, just with supernatural elements mixed in. If you are a deep Holmes nerd, you may love this! If, like me, you have a passing familiarity and fondness for Holmes, you might find it delightful when you can recognize the parallels! If you want an original mystery plot, you may be disappointed.

Things I loved
-Crow, Crow, Crow. I could not love a character more! I am a very enthusiastic human, who often falls for characters in books, but I cannot remember the last time one stole my heart so hard! I want to wrap him up in hugs, except he doesn't like to be touched, so instead I want to have tea with him and ask him lots of nerdy crime questions!

- The LGBTQIA rep: Reviewers have different opinions on whether or not this book has queer content, which I totally get! I think it does, it's just platonic queer content! (view spoiler)

-The worldbuilding: Though we don't get to dive deep into the specifics of this world, where angels, vampires, demons, and other supernatural beasties openly roam, we get glimpses as our heroes solve mysteries, and I adored every moment! In particular, the way the author addressed angels and vampires were really unique! One thing that really stood out was the importance of names to angels- without a name, and a place to be tethered to, Angels have no purpose or identity, and exist in a sort of hive mind. Something about naming, and Crow's queering of the naming system, really melted my heart.

-Crow and Doyle's friendship: Both are complicated people, who live just a little outside the norms of their world, and watching them make a home together and learn to care for each other was just the sweetest thing! I am here for more depictions of queer, platonic life partners!

- The Hounds of the Baskervilles section: hellhounds on the Moor- need I say more?

Things I less-than-loved

- I will admit that this lovely book was a slow start for me; something about the pacing or the period language made it so I kept picking it up and putting it down. Once I sat down and dedicated time to reading it, though, I devoured it in a day. I don't read a ton of historical fiction, though, so other readers may not have the same trouble I did.

Overall, The Angel of Crows is a deeply nerdy, supernatural Sherlock retelling with the best pair of best friends solving mysteries in London's paranormal underworld. Cozy mystery + fantasy = what's not to love?

I chose this book without reading other reviews, and was surprised to find that it was Sherlock Holmes fanfic. I like Sherlock Holmes just fine, but I wouldn't have picked it had I known. As is often the case for me reading fanfic-derived fiction, there isn't much character development other than porting over my already existing feelings about Sherlock. I also wasn't getting much about why adding the paranormal element adds anything to these well-trod stories. I can see how others will find it delightful but I did not. I wish I had read something that felt *inspired* by Sherlock Holmes but more fully realized in its own right, akin to the relationship between the Lunar Chronicles and Sailor Moon.