There’s more to London than you’ve ever know.live people in statues. Trains with minds of their own. Electric dancers. And an evil god in the skyscrapers. Beth, after one last act of betrayal, has been thrown out of her school and her home. After unexpectedcly coming across a pair of fighting railwraiths, she then finds Filius Viae, the Son of the Street, the son of Mother Thames, the goddess of London who has been absent for years. Together, they face adventure, danger and all kinds of things as they try and find a way to keep their London safe.I love London. I live about 30 minutes from there and I think that wandering round and looking at landmarks and pretty buildings and such is a great way to spend a day. Books set in the UK are good because I understand them and the language and idioms and such. Set in my favourite city? Huge bonus.I also love urban fantasy. And if there was ever a book to describe that term, this would be it. Pollock has created creatures that you couldn’t think about ever. The originality in coming up with the city’s underworld is amazing. This is a drawback in some ways. For example, on my first reading, I was tired and I just couldn’t envisage these things . This is one of the few books where I recommend a rereading, because a second time round, I got a lot more brilliance from this. There isn’t much world building, more a take it as you go along. This adds pace to the story and if you can handle it, you’ll love it.The characters are really good. Oh Fillius, I love you. I’m not sure why, but you are just generally awesome. You go through a lot, you stay strong and you are the most unique character I’ve come across. Beth is just as good a main character, feisty, talented, and really brave. I also really liked Parva, Beth’s best friend who should have featured a little bit more. Beth’s father, you feel for a lot, and Victor provides welcome humour. The other secondary characters are all distinctive and really well written.The plot is really interesting. I like the fact that Reach is simply an ever present threat, not up and in your face too much. The preparing and going to war was really interesting, and there’s a few character storylines too that just make you want to go up to almost every single one of them and hug them.The writing is good. The writing of action scenes and the description of everything are the best features of this, but for a really dark and gritty book (a lot of adult themes running through this) there’s some snatches of humour that are welcomed.4.5/5 average (1st reading 4, second a 5) rounded up to a 5 tea to urban fantasy in the best sense of the word.

The City’s Son is the first book of The Skyscraper Throne series and, also according to the cover, “a story about family, friends and monsters, and how you can’t always tell which is which”. This description fits it perfectly, but in addition to this, I believe it just might be a perfect example, despite all the grey areas surrounding the term, of ‘urban fantasy’ – and when I say perfect, I mean just that…
 
While the characters in this book are fascinating and engaging in their own right, it quickly becomes apparent (at least to me) that the real star of this show is London itself. The author shines a light on the city in such a way that it feels every bit as tangible as the people in it – and what I love most about this focus is that there’s no clean, detached ‘overview’ feel to the narration when it comes to bringing us, as readers, into this world. Whether the action and drama happens at street level or high among the eponymous skyscrapers, it is uncompromisingly gritty, realistic, wonderfully tangible – and also, it must be said, downright dirty.
 
But when you have a supporting character (‘Gutterglass’) who manifests him/herself entirely out of rubbish left in the streets with the help of a swarm of rats, ‘dirty’ is more or less inevitable.
 
This book is … weird. And yet it’s not. The hidden ‘wonderland’ of London is full of such beings as the aforementioned Gutterglass, all born or formed of various aspects of the city itself. If this is an urban version of a fairytale, it’s clearly unlike any fairytale I’ve read – though a comparison to Neil Gaiman is perhaps inevitable (indeed, the writer namechecks him as an inspiration in the acknowledgements). That said, Tom Pollock has made a remarkable impression with this writing style in his debut novel.
 
The ‘street level’ approach has two sides, of course; there is no literal hidden world in this version of London. There are no rabbit holes to fall down or mysterious doors to go through – the ‘hidden’ London is right there alongside the ‘real’ London. When Beth joins Filius to fight to save their city, they are fighting for the exact same streets, against an enemy corrupting everything they both love. Filius’s world is only hidden from Beth’s because the people in it don’t see – or choose not to see – what’s wandering those streets along with them every day. It’s a clever approach to the worldbuilding, and some of the scenes that result from it – Beth meeting Filius, and her setting out to find him again – let me really lose myself in her quest.
 
The story itself is deftly handled, and while there’s no cliffhanger-style ending to this book to precede the next, as I had half-expected, I still got a thoroughly satisfying experience out of reading it. The climax of the final battle with Reach (The Crane King, aka The Villain) came as a genuine shock to me, and left my budding-little-fangirl self quite distraught. Quite, I say.
 
No, I will not spoil it for you. Go and read it if you want to know!
 
That said, I am indeed very interesting in learning what our filthy little street gang will get up to next, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Book Two (The Glass Republic). Tag me impressed.