Die schlafenden Geister des Lake Superior: Eine Kimberley-Reynolds-Story
Ben Aaronovitch, Christine Blum (translator)
So, let me get one thing out of the way. Die schlafenden Geister des Lake Superior is a German translation of the novella Winter's Gifts, originally written in English by London author Ben Aaronovitch. It is the first book-length work in the Rivers of London series to be set in the USA. I am a US citizen and a native English speaker. So why did I read this book in German, and why am I writing my review in English?
Winter's Gifts was released in England on 8-Jun-2023. As of the date of writing this review, 13-Jun-2023, it is still not available in English from the US Amazon site, except as an audiobook. Oddly, however, the German translation was available on the US Amazon site from 20-Apr. I have no idea why the publishers think that not releasing the book in its original English in the USA is a wise marketing strategy.
So, not wanting to wait, I bought and read the German translation. Now, although I read Deutsch fairly well, it is beyond my abilities to write more than a sentence or two auf Deutsch. Thus, with apologies, my review is written in English.
As the subtitle indicates, this is a story about FBI agent Kimberley (Kim) Reynolds, whom we met in Whispers Underground, where she learned that magic is real by experiencing it with Peter Grant. Since then she has become the US FBI contact for magical affairs, i.e., the person Peter calls if he needs some help from the USA. Kim is much less advanced than Peter or even Abigail Kamara. She has learned to perceive Vestigia but is not a practitioner -- she has received no formal training in magic. It's not really clear if there even exists anyone in US law enforcement who could do that for her.
The FBI gets a call from a retired agent now living in Wisconsin in which he asks in code for the magic department. Kim is dispatched to the fictional town of Eloise, Wisconsin to figure out what is going on. And then lots of exciting stuff happens, involving magical monsters and a new genius locurum and local members the Ojibwe First Nation. It's all exciting enough. Peter and Abigail make an appearance on the other end of a telephone call, and more often in Kim's thoughts.
Ich habe schon ein paar knifflige Situationen erlebt, in denen ich mich fragte: ›Was würde Peter Grant jetzt sagen?‹ Nicht ›Was würde er tun?‹, denn so verzweifelt werde ich hoffentlich nie sein. Aber sein Rat hat sich schon hin und wieder als nützlich erwiesen.
(Interestingly enough, this seems to me very like the way that Abigail thinks of Peter.)
I have to say, though, that compared to the Peter Grant books, this one feels muted to me, as if while writing Aaronovitch constantly had the worry, "Can I write this without bringing hordes of rabid Americans down on my head?" I grew up in the USA, und zwar, in the northern USA near the Great Lakes, so I too had a thought like that in mind as I read. And I am here to say that Aaronovitch gets it mostly right -- nothing really feels off. (But remember, I'm reading a German translation.) Now, this caution is very different from the feel of the books set in London. London is Aaronovitch's patch, and he knows when he can and should transgress. I surmise that he doesn't dare transgress in an American story.
Here's an example. Kim doesn't swear, and she doesn't like it when people around her curse. Fine, she had a religious upbringing, and many Americans are like that. Also, it works as a small comic side to Kim's badass personality (reminiscent of Peter's struggles with the first-person accusative pronoun). But it also frees Aaronovitch from trying to get American profanity right. The Londoners in the Rivers of London series have no such restraint: Peter, Leslie, Beverly, Stephanopoulos, and Seawoll drop F-bombs all over the place. It is obvious that Aaronovitch feels he can produce realistic-sounding London cussing. I don't KNOW that he made Kim sensitive in this matter in order to spare himself difficulty, but her delicacy certainly has that convenient effect.
As for the story and environment, there were few places where I, as a longtime inhabitant of the Great Frozen North, said, to myself, "That's all wrong", but there was also no place where I thought, "That's an insightful, original way to describe how it feels, or how it looks."
So, in summary, it's a fine story. There's nothing wrong with it, really. But nothing in it makes me really jump with joy.
Amazon review of German edition