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The Rook (2012)

by Daniel O'Malley

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: The Checquy Files (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,9522044,665 (4.09)246
A high-ranking member of a secret organization that battles supernatural forces wakes up in a London park with no memory, no idea who she is, and with a letter that provides instructions to help her uncover a far-reaching conspiracy.
  1. 40
    Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (Rubbah)
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    Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (majkia)
  3. 10
    Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley (dphseven)
    dphseven: The sequel
  4. 10
    London Falling by Paul Cornell (pwaites)
    pwaites: An urban fantasy mystery taking place in London.
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    The Incrementalists by Steven Brust (TomWaitsTables)
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  8. 11
    Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore (Othemts)
  9. 00
    The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (LongDogMom)
    LongDogMom: Both of these books are fun reads that have a similar style and feel. I think if you like one of them, you'll like the other as well.
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    "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (All the Wrong Questions) by Lemony Snicket (Othemts)
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    Yesterday's Hero by Jonathan Wood (LongDogMom)
    LongDogMom: Both books are about British secret agencies protecting humans from supernatural threat and both are laugh out loud funny.
  14. 00
    Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (LongDogMom)
    LongDogMom: Same kind of quirky humour and style
  15. 00
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    pwaites: Urban fantasy with a strong female lead and no romance.
  16. 00
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  17. 00
    Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell (dphseven)
    dphseven: Playful start to a series of novellas of a christian minister and her witchy friends fighting the forces of chaos. Similar feel to the Rook.
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» See also 246 mentions

English (201)  Dutch (1)  German (1)  All languages (203)
Showing 1-5 of 201 (next | show all)
This is a fast paced fantasy thriller and the mystery is quite satisfyingly solved.

Rook Thomas deserves all the kudos, specially pre-memory loss. I really love when I can be in the shoes of someone so efficient and well prepared. I'm intrigued about the next books but I'll miss the letters format for sure.

This is one of the books that I loved the most this year! ( )
  omseijas | Feb 3, 2024 |
Loved the first half. The end fizzled a bit. ( )
  epear | Jan 22, 2024 |
Revisiting an old favorite once again. ( )
  yarmando | Jan 21, 2024 |
Solid fun, exciting mystery. I liked the unusual structure, with superpowers and secret government organizations, but all so British. The main character has lost all her memories, and so the story has a very unique perspective of someone trying to figure out their old life, which was crazy. A bit violent for my usual taste, but highly recommended. ( )
  mslibrarynerd | Jan 13, 2024 |
I wish i could just add another date to when i read this, because i just re-read it. Since i can't...i first read it January 25, 2014. ( )
  karenhmoore | Jan 1, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 201 (next | show all)
I became intrigued by Daniel O’Malley’s debut novel, The Rook, when Time book critic Lev Grossman raved, more than a month before the book’s release, that “this aging, jaded, attention-deficit-disordered critic was blown away.”

Indeed, The Rook is great, rattling fun, as if Neil Gaiman took Buffy the Vampire Slayer and crossed it with Torchwood.

It starts with a bang: Myfanwy Thomas awakens in a rainy London park, surrounded by a ring of dead bodies, all wearing latex gloves. She has no idea how she or the corpses got there. In fact, she doesn’t even know that she’s Myfanwy Thomas, because she is suffering from amnesia and remembers nothing about herself.

Myfanwy is a Rook, a junior-level member of the Court, an elite group of eight super-powered intelligence agents. The Court runs the Checquy Group, a British agency on Her Majesty’s Hyper-Secret Service, so powerful that it makes MI6 look lame. In fact, Myfanwy learns, “The Court answers to the highest individuals in the land only, and not always to them.”

Myfanwy discovers everything about herself from a dossier entrusted to her by “the original Myfanwy Thomas,” the person she was before she lost her memory. Her amnesia was no accident: One of her mysterious colleagues on the Court, she learns, is a traitor who wiped her memory and now wants her dead.

In the meantime, Myfanwy must step back into her own life and relearn everything about being Rook Thomas, all without anyone finding out what has happened to her. Her own life is anything but normal, because the Checquy Group is always on the lookout for monsters. One can never be too vigilant, since “Checquy statistics indicate that 15 percent of all men in hats are concealing horns.”

Thanks to the Checquy, Britons are blissfully unaware that supernatural forces constantly threaten the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. (The Checquy’s American counterpart is called the Croatoan, a little in-joke that is never explained but which students of American history will immediately get.) The worst of these threats to the U.K. are the Grafters, who come from Belgium, a mild-mannered nation that O’Malley manages to render extremely sinister.

Throughout a rip-roaring narrative, O’Malley off-handedly weaves deadpan humor. As a Rook, Myfanwy is more paper-pusher than field agent, and her job lacks glamour: “There’s a reason that there’s no TV show called CSI: Forensic Accounting.” She always gets stuck with tasks like “figuring out why the hell a two-door wardrobe in the spare room of a country house is considered to be a matter of national concern.”

But crises loom, duty calls, and Myfanwy soon finds herself using her own superpower to battle horrid Belgian monsters — at least whenever she isn’t “laboriously penning formal invitations to the members of the Court to come dine at the Rookery tonight before observing the unbelievably magical amazingness of the United Kingdom’s only oracular duck.

“Of course, I couched it all in slightly more impressive terms.”
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Daniel O'Malleyprimary authorall editionscalculated
Duerden, SusanNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Dedication
For my father, Bill O'Malley, who read to me at bedtime,
and my mother, Jeanne O'Malley, who read to me the rest of the time.
First words
Dear You,
The body you are wearing used to be mine.
She stood shivering in the rain, watching the words on the letter dissolve under the downpour.
Quotations
According to Thomas, the city had once been a veritable hotbed of manifestations, with every sorcerer, bunyip, golem, goblin, pict, pixie, demon, thylacine, gorgon, moron, cult, scum, mummy, rummy, groke, sphinx, minx, muse, flagellant, diva, reaver, weaver, reaper, scabbarder, scabmettler, dwarf, midget, little person, leprechaun, marshwiggle, totem, soothsayer, truthsayer, hatter, hattifattener, imp, panwere, mothman, shaman, flukeman, warlock, morlock, poltergeist, zeitgeist, elemental, banshee, manshee, lycanthrope, lichenthrope, sprite, wighte, aufwader, harpy, silkie, kelpie, klepto, specter, mutant, cyborg, blrog, troll ogre, cat in shoes, dog in a hat, psychic, and psychotic seemingly having decided that THIS was the hot spot to visit.
Thus, while other members of the organization attain high positions through their remarkable accomplishments in the field, I became a member of the Court simply through my work in the bureaucracy.

Does that sound lame? I'm very, very good. There's not a formal timeline for ascending to the Court. In fact, most people never get in. I am the youngest person in the current Court. I got there after ten years of working in administration. The next-youngest got in after sixteen years of highly dangerous fieldwork. That's how good an administrator I am.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (2)

A high-ranking member of a secret organization that battles supernatural forces wakes up in a London park with no memory, no idea who she is, and with a letter that provides instructions to help her uncover a far-reaching conspiracy.

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Book description
"Dear You:
The body you are wearing used to be mine."


So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies — all wearing latex gloves. With no memory of who she is or how she got there, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and escape those who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in the Checquy, a secret government agency that protects the world against supernatural threats — from sentient fungus to stampeding ectoplasm — while keeping the populace in the dark. But now there is a mole on the inside, and this person wants Myfanwy dead.

In her quest to save herself and unmask the traitor, Myfanwy will encounter a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she could ever have imagined. And she must learn to harness her own rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability.

Suspenseful and hilarious — "Harry Potter meets Ghostbusters meets War of the WorldsThe Rook is an outrageously inventive debut novel for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime, or their supernatural thrillers with an agenda and a pencil skirt.

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