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5 of 100: Rivers of London
Jul. 12th, 2012 07:26 pm
New obsession! I absolutely loved Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London- and the best thing is there are two more books in the series! All I have to do is work out how to get my hands on them...
This is very much a London book, by a London author, so I'm disposed to like it from the start. It also combines two other things I like- mystery/police procedural and magic (but not Harry Potter, as one character remarks.) Peter Grant is a trainee constable, just about to be assigned to a unit, when a bizarre murder happens in Covent Garden. Assigned to guard duty, he ends up taking a witness statement from a ghost, and his life gets complicated from there.
There are some similarities to the Bryant & May books (which I also love), most notably in that both authors have done a book on the Punch & Judy theme, but Aaronovitch's London is both recognizably London and distinct in its own way with its own rules of magic. (There are also some echoes of Neverwhere.) The book is light-hearted and fast-paced- despite all that he's stepped into, Peter Grant has a sense of humour.
This is one of those books where I knew before I was even halfway through (so about half an hour in) that I was going to have to get my own copy, because having to obtain it from the library when I want to read it again isn't going to cut it.
Also, on a slight tangent, can I just say how much I detest the changing of book covers when books cross from the UK to the US (or vice versa)? It seems like the native covers are usually the nicer ones. As an example, the Bryant and May books have utterly twee covers here in the US, while the Rivers of London books ended up with covers that look like bad young adult fiction. (For anyone who doesn't know what I'm on about, pull up Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and find the following on both: Bryant and May, Rivers of London, Harry Potter, The Lost Hero.)
