Losing Her Divinity", in Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales, edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

The story gradually grows grander and bigger until it’s nonstop action—confronting monsters, figuring out who’s a traitor, and all that good stuff—like an avalanche. Susan smiled, thinking about what all this meant. Her subconscious hard at work fantasizing, fueled by too many fantasy novels and a childhood diet of Susan Cooper, Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. The brook creature and the huge ravens and the earth lizard should all make up a nightmare, but the dream wasn’t frightening. Quite the reverse, in fact. She always felt strangely comforted after she had the dream. By a third of the way through, I still didn’t understand anything about the world. Honestly, I’ve finished reading and I still feel lost.I thought Nix handled his world building well. The main character, Susan, knows nothing about the magic system, so we find out about it at same time she does. Other things are left unexplained for us to make sense of as events occur. I much prefer this to info dumping which can be boring and intrude on the story. Susan looked at the phone, and thought about calling the police. But after a single second more of careful but lightning-fast thought, she followed him. The setting is a slightly alternate London in the 1980's. Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister but she is Britain's second woman PM. The first was Clementina Attlee. Nix has a lot of fun with gender throughout the book which will bring a smile to anyone old enough to have watched the TV shows of the day (for example Denise Waterman in The Sweeney).

Pediculus humanus capitis. A louse,” replied the young man, who was reloading his revolver, hitching up his waistcoat to take rounds from a canvas bullet belt. “Made bigger, obviously. We really have to go. Name’s Merlin, by the bye.” Susan waited for Jassmine to continue, but her mother’s voice trailed off and she was staring at the wall, whatever thought had been about to emerge lost somewhere along the way. I thought I had reached the big climactic battle, but it turned out there was another hour and another big battle to come. After reading the absolutely abysmally plotted and paced Angel Mage, I was walking into this one with some trepidation. I love classic Garth Nix, in that I love Sabriel and the original Abhorsen trilogy, but I haven't been able to find as much joy in any of his other works.This series was self-published, and republished by Text Publishing. Described as books for "Very Clever Babies Aged 3–6 Months", they contain such words as ichthyologist, as used by the character Freddy the Fish.