More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Broken Homes – Supernatural Mystery Suspense Fantasy – Ben Aaronovitch

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Picking favorite books is a little picking favorite kids; you can’t.  So far I’ve loved all of Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant/Rivers of London series; Midnight Riot was grand, introducing us to Peter, his buddy Lesley, boss Inspector Nightingale, crypto-pathologist Dr Walid, assorted semi-supernatural rivers and semi-dead bad guys.  Moon Over Soho gave us jazz vampires and introduced the Faceless Man.  Whispers Underground was just a tiny step down the wow! scale as we plodded through London’s sewers and discovered the Quiet Folk.

Now we’ve Broken Homes, combining the best of the first three with more suspense and mystery.  Inspector Nightingale goes into action, Peter and Lesley chase bad guys, and best of all, Peter does his usual intuitive/random/unfocused policing.

I enjoy Peter’s curiosity and intuitive feel for hidden problems.  Combined with his talent for messing up, his unique approach to problems makes him feel like someone I know.  Peter tells the story himself, using his own colloquial slang grammar (“me and Lesley”) and shares his thoughts as he goes.  He is refreshing, honest with himself and it’s fun to ride along inside his head.

The book works on multiple levels.  It’s a police/mystery/suspense story as Peter discovers the plot and sleuths connections that are as wispy as cobwebs, a character story, and a wizard/magic fantasy.  Peter is the common element and he’s a great character, well thought out, rounded, real.

Broken Homes ramps up the stakes for Peter and Nightingale.  Earlier we danced around small disasters and caught glimpses of a larger threat; this time we can see more.  The Faceless Man is an example. Inspector Nightingale calls the Faceless Man a criminal, and so he is, but his aims are hidden until the end when he tells Peter he is pursuing power, more magic power than he can safely use within himself.

Broken Homes has great secondary characters, Betsy and Kevin of the slightly shady Tankridge family and Jake Phillips, socialist activist and balcony gardener.  (His garden sounded wonderful.)

Aaronovitch uses tiny details to make bit players real.  Example is how he presents Jake Phillips as dignified, older, dedicated in just a short paragraph.  Jake is completely unembarrassed when Peter catches him stooping to put a notice in Peter’s Skytower mail slot – a vastly undignified position.  Jake needs help to stand up, so we feel his age and arthritic back.

These encounters make the story richer, more real and add humor.  In fact Broken Homes had several laugh out loud scenes, particularly Peter’s comments on architecture and decorating.  Plus we got a rich list of new British slang terms and food types; I particularly liked reading about suet jam pudding.  For the uninitiated it is not the English version of Eskimo ice cream but a cross between a shortening-rich pastry, a steamed bread and jelly roll.  Maybe someday I’ll make one.

Broken Homes took the Rivers of London series on a slight turn that should result in better stories, a longer series, more difficulties and more realistic suspense.  Earlier we tiptoed through the tulips with Peter – despite horrible moments and murders in Midnight Riot it mostly seemed like magic was fun – but now it’s serious.  There are ethically-challenged wizards who don’t care whom they hurt (even if they do draw the line at mass murder) and there is something in the Folly basement…

Five Stars.

 

Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

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Magazine Foreign Affairs recommended Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by John Nagl, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army who has experience researching, teaching and fighting counter insurgency in Iraq.  Nagl writes in an engaging style with humor and emotion, making this an easy-to-read book that covers a deadly serious and important topic.

Nagl covered his earlier theories on counter insurgency, developed via research for his doctorate from Oxford in a prior book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.  In Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice he shows how his theories worked in the real world, in Iraq.

He spent a few chapters in his current book summarizing his experiences and what prompted his interest and led him to proselytize counter insurgency as a mandatory skill for the US military. These early chapters painted Nagl as intelligent, dedicated, very self-aware, excellent at building networks and friends, and thoughtful.  He realized that the downside of US military superiority is that few enemies will choose to fight us face to face.   Asymmetrical / guerrilla wars will be more common.

Nagl spent time at the Pentagon as a military assistant in the Department of Defense, and time teaching at West Point, and used both opportunities to plant seeds in leaders’ minds of the need to switch focus from wrecking havoc to protecting the population after the military invades a country.

Nagl shared excellent insights into the misery the US ran into immediately after the Iraq invasion:  The planning was superficial and did not address what to do with the country once we got there; the decision to disband the Iraq army meant no one was in charge of huge weapons depots and tens of thousands of experienced and angry men were no unemployed; the insufficient number of US troops to simultaneously protect people, secure weapons and deal with the chaos.

Nagl’s primary message is that counterinsurgency is messy, unpleasant, unrewarding and absolutely necessary.  He supports what should be obvious, that the US shouldn’t get into fights without careful thought and only when necessary, and if we do, we must have a plan to deal with the aftermath.  Further we need to develop and institutionalize the skills to handle post conflict problems and the ability to learn and adapt.

Overall Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice is excellent, well worth reading if you are interested in foreign affairs or understanding the effects politics and military affairs have on each other.  I found a few pages annoying but the book overall is illuminating and reflects the author’s experience augmented by his carefully thought out theory of war.

Decoding British-isms or English the Way Peter Grant Speaks

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I kept getting sidetracked when reading Ben Aaronovitch’s Broken Homes because I was curious about Peter Grant’s British-isms even when context made the meaning clear.  I kept my phone open to Wikipedia and Google and Dictionary and after a few hours reading as much online as in the book I decided to emulate Peter and note down what I found.  Then I read the book all the way through again without stopping – it is that good!

Kathy’s Guide to Peter Grant’s British-isms

Breeze Block = this one is grand.  It’s a cement block, and after living through 20 Michigan winters in a cement block house, “breeze block” is the perfect name.

Crittal strip window.  Crittal is an English window manufacturer, so I’m guessing this is a narrow transom window.

Damp Course = this one turned out to be my ignorance of building, not a British-ism at all.  It’s the waterproof layer one puts in a house.

Flat Packed Furniture = knocked down, stuff you buy in a box and assemble per the easy instructions.

Muggins = myself, me.

Mullered = beat up.

“Isn’t It” = rhetorical type question, way to end a statement without actually saying “duh, you dummy”.

Shebeen = pretty darn informal market, originally one selling unlicensed liquor

Tin = can.  (Yes, I know, anyone who reads any books by English novelists should know this one!)

Jam & Suet Pudding = Sort of a cross between jelly roll, pastry and lard in a steamed dessert. You make a pastry using suet (the cow version of lard and just as healthy), roll up with jam, then steam over boiling water.  Remember our English friends call desserts “puddings” and cookies are “biscuits”.  (Before I read the recipe I feared it might be a jam version of Eskimo ice cream.  Luckily for our English friends’ health, not so.)

Fried Slice = fried piece of bread.  Really.  Think of French toast but without the egg coating.

Candy Floss = cotton candy.

75 Inch Samsung Television in a Poor Person’s Apartment = Clue that said poor person might be collecting televisions that fall off trucks (or lorries).

Garden = yard, as in your front / side / back yard with lawn, bushes, trees and maybe a garden.

Krio = a real language, sort of a pidgin that Sierra Leone residents who originally migrated from Nova Scotia, ex slaves and similar developed.

Jumper = sweater.  This one used to throw me until I looked it up.  We call sleeveless dresses you wear over turtlenecks “jumpers” and they are ladies’ wear, not for men.  English men wear jumpers that are crew neck sweaters.

Artic = a type of articulated bus.

Lorry = truck.  This is one of the basics, like Hoovering for vacuuming or loo for bathroom.

Biro = ball point pen, so named because a gentleman named Biro invented them!

Council Housing = subsidized housing.  This was a fascinating topic, interesting to see differences between English and American solutions to house poorer people.  The town we lived in had subsidized housing but it looked just like regular apartment buildings, or sometimes people got vouchers (or equivalent) to rent a house.  It’s a little different in big cities where well-meaning planners built huge housing projects that today sadly sometimes are assaulted by gangs and may be rather nasty and unsafe.

Per Wikipedia at one time about 25% of all families lived in council housing; I don’t think it was ever so high here.  From the photos and descriptions council housing ranged from individual houses to more commonly duplexes, 4-apartment buildings and on up.  Enormous complexes like Sky Garden apparently got a bad rep, just as the mammoth projects did in the US.

Semi = duplex, two houses stuck together, often mirror images of each other.

Terrace Housing = town house, two story apartments built together in a single structure, each separate entrance.

Estates, as in Council Estates, to Live on an Estate = I’m not sure why the names include “estates” but it apparently refers to a group of homes of any design that are managed together.  I thought this was an odd term, and to live on an estate sounded strange to my ears.  My guess is that the term drifted over from the old lord of the manor who had his tenant farmers who lived on his estate.

Sink Estate = really bad locale, don’t go after dark type of council estate.

There you have it, British decoded for American ears.  Now back to the book…

 

 

 

The Queen of Attolia – Megan Whalen Turner – The Queen’s Thief Book 2

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Like its predecessor, The Thief, Megan Turner’s The Queen of Attolia is engrossing, a novel targeted towards older teens that mature readers will enjoy.  (Read my review of The Thief here.)

The Queen of Attolia opens several months after The Thief, with our friend Eugenides once more skulking through a royal palace, this time the queen’s palace in Attolia.  The queen is furious at losing face when Eugenides escaped her earlier and is determined to capture Eugenides.  Eugenides escapes the palace chased by a mob of soldiers and dogs into a fence, gets a concussion and the queen captures him.  The queen decides to teach him a lesson and get revenge on her fellow ruler, the queen of Eddis, and cuts off his right hand.  Once Eugenides is healed enough to survive the journey the queen returns him to Eddis.

Attolia’s revenge sparks a low-intensity war, with raids and blockades, one that neither country can win while both further threatened by Sounis and Mede.  Eugenides and the Eddis queen divert Sounis, leaving the Medes embedded in Attolia’s court and eager to take over.

A Novel For Adults

The Queen of Attolia is a more mature, more thoughtful book than The Thief.  Publisher Harper Collins marketed it under their YA imprint and it’s listed that way in our library system and on Amazon.  Older teens will love the story but it is written for adults, even more so than The Thief.

Eugenides narrated The Thief in the first person, letting us revel in his cleverness and his success outwitting Sounis and Attolia.  Author Turner presented each episode developed and finished it as we expect in novels for adults, but with a sense of fun and lightheartedness.  The Magus talked of the looming threats from Mede that could rip to shreds all three kingdoms’ security ad freedom.   But overall The Thief avoided deeper issues or emotions.

The characters in Queen of Attolia are older, more thoughtful, more aware of the larger geopolitical landscape.  Turner uses the threats to each country’s future and to each individual to show tension between duty and love, imperatives and desires.

Turner relates the story in the third person, covering Eugenides and Attolia in turn, then shifting to the supporting characters while the plot steadily narrows their choices. The Mede ambassador manipulates a way to inveigle Attolia to welcome (more or less) the Medean forces – since treaties prohibit the Medean forces from landing on the mainland without an invitation.  Attolia must then decide whom to ally with, Eddis or Mede, and to what extent to build the alliance.

Characters

The Queen of Attolia deals as much with Attolia (the woman) as with Eugenides.  Turner develops her character by showing us how she responds to threats now and how she dealt years earlier with the problem of succeeding her father without being supplanted by her unloving fiance and erstwhile father-in-law.  She learned to be ruthless, direct when needed and discrete when that served.  She has forgotten how to love, if in fact she ever did.

Eugenides is very well done.  One thing I particularly liked was he was afraid, terrified in fact, of dying by inches, of losing his sight, being maimed.  So often heroes in YA fantasies are too caught up in their nobility to feel fear, and this was one reason I felt the book appealed to older audiences.  He too could be ruthless or charming, whichever he needed.

Nahuseresh, Mede ambassador to Attolia, is masterfully done.  He is wise, yet so constrained by his expectations for a proper female role (i.e., not as Queen Regnant) that Attolia can manipulate him – while he believes he is the puppet master, whispering advice and insinuating himself into Attolia’s favor.

Summary

I enjoyed The Queen of Attolia very much.  It is not a challenging book, no strange names, fairly short, straightforward plot, but the characters were well done and the plot moved along.  I’m looking forward to borrowing book #4, The King of Attolia.  4 Stars.

 

 

 

Titanborn – Near Future Science Fiction – Post Disaster Corporate Control

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Rhett C. Bruno’s Titanborn imagines a world 300 years after a near-miss extinction event, when a meteorite nearly ended humanity.  His world is smaller than ours, with most people concentrated along the continental ridges and in long, strung out cities.  Most animals and plants are extinct.  A group of people escaped Earth before the meteorite strike, fled to Saturn’s large moon Titan and set up society there.

World Building and Back Story

Folks left alive on Earth adapted.  The nominal government is the USF but mega corporations hold the real power, including summary capital punishment.

Lead character Malcolm Graves is a Collector, one of the men Pervenio corporation sends out to enforce its rules – by any means necessary.  Malcolm is happy to kill or capture, whichever gives him the biggest paycheck.

Titanborn opens with Malcolm tracking down an asteroid miner with delusions of owning his own destiny and the leader of a proto union that is on strike.  Pervenio can’t have miners strike (nor people thinking they can run their own show) so send Malcolm to kill or capture the culprit.  Instead the miner leader blows out the atmospheric seal, killing himself, the Pervenio security team, and dozens of others.  Malcolm isn’t happy and his boss is even less happy and orders Malcolm on vacation.

Pervenio expanded to Titan about 100 years before the novel opens to extract gasses from Saturn’s atmosphere and use the water in the rings and on Titan.  Pervenio exploited the  original Titan colonists and the new residents brought diseases that sent many Titan dwellers into brutal quarantine where they die.  The original colonists are not happy with the situation.

The idea of a world controlled by corporations or colonists dominated by the home planet is not new, but Bruno does a good job building on these themes.  We get a sense of Titanborn’s imagined physical earth, colder and far less beautiful, crowded with people concentrated in narrow bands along maglev lines.  Author Bruno built his world economically and politically and touched lightly on social dynamics or nature.  I inferred that most Earth people were reasonably happy and content with the situation, not particularly upset by the corporate control and not concerned with much beyond today.

Characters

Unfortunately I didn’t like either of the two main characters, Malcolm Graves or Zhaff the freakish Spock-like new agent.  Malcolm cares about nothing much beyond himself and drinking.  He dreams of the big payoff he’ll get for settling the Titan problem but it’s clear he has no idea what to do with the money, no intention to leave Collecting for a peaceful life, no notion of what he wants beyond the thrill of chasing malcontents, sex and drinking.

Zhaff is a highly trained operative with little personality.  (In fact I thought the big reveal might be that he is an android.)  He wears an eye lens that connects to his nerves and calmly announces to Malcolm that he has an unusually small amygdala, the part of the brain that handles emotions.  He is there as a foil for Malcolm.

Plot

The plot is straightforward combination of shoot-em-up, detecting and betrayal.  The final twist was not a surprise, I think any reader would see that come a long way ahead, right about half way into the novel.  I didn’t feel tension or much conflict or suspense, a bit pedestrian for a science fiction story with such an interesting premise and sound background.

Summary

Malcolm tells the story first person so we experience what he does, feel what he feels.  Unfortunately, although the world building is top notch, the plot is workmanlike and the characters are unpleasant enough that I didn’t much enjoy being inside Malcolm’s head, seeing and feeling along with him.  If Bruno had created a more likable character this would be a fine novel.  As it is, I have to give it a gentleman’s C+, 3 stars.

I received an advance copy through NetGalley at no charge in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

 

The Glittering Court – Review of Sneak Peek – YA Fantasy with Romance

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NetGalley offered a sneak peek of The Glittering Court, a novel of romance and intrigue set in a fantasy world similar to ours of 500 years ago.  This is considered fantasy due to the imaginary world, but there were no magical events or any of the other elements we think of as “fantasy”.

The story is straightforward:  The Countess of Rothford has a title and ancient family name but little money.  She is to marry a distant cousin and quickly decides this man is not for her.  She sends her maid, Adelaide, back to her family and takes Adelaide’s name and her place in the Glittering Court.  The Court is a school to train lower-born girls to act, dress and talk like upper class ladies so they can find rich husbands in the New World.  Adelaide’s only challenge is to not succeed too much because she needs to remain safely anonymous.

Adelaide faces the threat of exposure and forced return while around her society and her country Osfrid are churning with religious strife and the fallout from the civil war in neighboring Sirminica.  She is intrigued with man who recruited her, Cedric, and it’s clear from the sneak peek that they are falling in love.  That’s a problem because Cedric’s family runs the Glittering Court to supply classy wives to the frontier men, not to find a classy wife themselves.  And Cedric adheres to the outlawed religion; discovery could mean he dies.

The Glittering Court is aimed at teens, 7th grade and up.  The writing style – language, scene changes, themes – are sufficiently engaging that many adults will enjoy the book too.  I didn’t find any of the “and a miracle happens” events nor the abrupt switches among viewpoints that make some teen novels so disappointing and hard to read.  Author Mead does a good job presenting the situations, giving us reasonable dialogue and events, then finishing the scene before moving on.

While I was not intrigued enough to seek out the full novel, I do recommend this to older teen girls and adults who enjoy a romance with fantasy elements.

I received a free copy of the sneak peek in the expectation of an honest review.

Whispers Underground – Peter Grant #3 by Ben Aaronovitch

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I first met Peter Grant about a week ago where he met a ghost, Inspector Nightingale, an evil revenant and the merry crew of London police in Midnight Riot (see review here).  Peter and I hit it off big time and renewed our friendship in Moon over Soho (review here), now we are once again traipsing through London in Whispers Underground.

Peter is one of those characters you empathize with – you really feel like you are right with him solving crimes, studying Latin, practicing magic and trying to avoid major faux pas with the police force such as not setting Covent Garden on fire.  The only problem is that empathizing with Peter in Whispers Underground means you are wading through London sewers right alongside.  Yuck!

I’ve usually found that the second book in a series is the weakest, but this series is the exception. I liked Moon Over Soho a lot and Whispers Underground lost a little of the zany action and fast thinking.  Given the high 5 stars I gave Moon, all that means is that Whispers slipped to oh, maybe a 4.

Why was Whispers was less satisfying?

Peter was in plenty of danger in Whispers (and the two earlier books) but the actual danger moments, getting shot and buried alive, didn’t feel real.  Peter created a shield that protected from the bullets and hallucinated during the burial.  Unless Aaronovitch revisits his hallucination in later books the several pages spent visiting with the dream line Mr. Tyburn seemed like a side trip that went nowhere.

There were a couple off tune plot elements, like the visits with Albert Woodville-Gentle.  It felt like Aaronovitch originally planned to build more on the Ethically Challenged Magician but took a wrong turn. Instead he was a throwaway character that didn’t add anything to the plot.

The Lost Tribe of Navvies (tunnel builders from the 1800s who decided to stay underground) made no sense whatsoever.  We never learned why they decided to stay underground for 150 years.  Peter and Leslie were smart enough to realize there was no solution for the tunnel dwellers; if they were brought into the open the massive British social services and social requirements would descend and make their lives miserable.  We didn’t get resolution here.

The book had its fun moments, especially when Peter decides to go ceramic hunting and has to explain himself to the pragmatic Stephanopoulos.  New minor character Zach Palmer is a shameless grifter that we didn’t get to do much with and I hope we meet up again with FBI agent Reynolds.

Overall I’d give this 4 stars, very good but not quite the fun, clever novel we enjoyed in the first two Peter Grant.

Moon Over Soho – Intuitive Wizard’s Approach to Police Work – Ben Aaronovitch

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Last week I found the delicious Peter Grant series of London copper/wizard adventures by Ben Aaronovitch (read review of Midnight Riot here) and quickly requested the next book, Moon over Soho.  Wow.  What an excellent piece of fun/fantasy/true crime/romance/interior design critique!

Our hero, Peter Grant, gets deeper into magic and stumbles across the dark side.  We have at least 3 mysteries happening:

The jazz vampire
The gonad gourmet
The repulsive faceless guy
And if not already covered by one of the above, the magician behind the Strip Club of Dr. Moreau

The complex plot fits together and I didn’t have to go back and forth to clear up loose points.  Once again Aaronovitch brings us quirky, interesting characters and bit players, with lots of London tourist guidance all carefully layered into a fast, nifty plot.  I won’t spoil the story but be aware that Peter manages to cause tens of thousands in damages when he dragoons an ambulance and dumps the ambulance-ee into the Thames.  Then there’s the helicopter problem, the demon traps, his girlfriend’s missing face, his other girlfriend’s obsession with jazz….

Happiness is Learning Latin While Catching Bad Guys

Several Amazon reviewers compared the Peter Grant series to Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, I suspect because both series have the wizard-in-the-big-city motif, but the two are completely different.  Aaronovitch’s book has darkness and evil (the jazz vampires were bad by accident) but they are happier and happy-go-lucky Peter relishes the good and is joyfully ensconced  in the police, apprehending bad guys.

Detective Inspector Nightingale, Peter’s boss, is training him to be a wizard and we get a glimpse of the not-much-like-Hogwarts school for magically inclined folks that Nightingale attended back before WW1.  The school is long closed and Peter has to learn the magic formae with Nightingale’s help, hundreds of hours of practice, with the aid of obscure Latin texts.

Peter is a bit scattershot.  His friends and bosses all tell him to focus, but I think he is focused, he just lets his mind wander down the side tracks and dusty alleys of everything else that’s going on.  He works by intuition.  I like the guy.

Architecture and Bad Interior Design

One thing I loved about all the Peter Grant books so far are the asides and running commentary on the quality (dismal) of the architecture and interior furnishings where Peter goes.  We see nightclubs with gold and crimson flocked wallpaper, interview rooms shoehorned into former closets, offices with cheap wallboard and stack box (I assume another term for knocked down/you assemble) furniture, not to mention Tupperware office buildings.  I notice buildings and the art – or lack of it – in offices and it makes me queasy to see some of the atrocious decorating.  (Where I used to work replaced their modest wall art including a couple very nice paintings with enormous photographs of unhappy looking people.  No idea why but it was depressing.)

Summary

If Moon Over Soho intrigues you, then stop now and start with the first novel with Peter Grant, Midnight Riot (aka Rivers of London.)  You can catch up on the characters and back story if you start with Moon, but you’ll enjoy the book more if you read them sequentially.  Besides Midnight Riot was wonderful, so do yourself a favor and read it.

The Thief – Megan Whalen Turner – Fantasy with a Touch of Greece

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Author Megan Whalen Turner states she was inspired by Greece and used bits and pieces of Grecian history and geography to write The Thief.  These basic blocks plus good character development and an intriguing plot with unexpected twists made The Thief an imaginative fantasy while avoiding a retelling of Grecian myths.

The plot features Gen, a braggart and thief currently imprisoned in the King’s royal prison in Sounis, a smallish state south of Eddis and west of Attolia.  Gen made the mistake of bragging about stealing the king’s seal, then doing it and then getting caught, so he’s in chains and unable to escape.  We can tell from the get-go that there is a lot more to Gen than these bare facts – anyone who reads fantasies will recognize the noble-born-but-pretending-to-be-common character.  Turner doles out bits and pieces of hints to clue us into Gen’s real status but holds out the complete story until the end.

The king’s Magus retrieves Gen from jail to steal the Gift of Hamiathes, the stone that is the kingship symbol in Eddis.  The king of Suonis wants to Gift to force the queen of Eddis to marry him.  The magus has two younger men, Sophos and Ambiades and Sophos’ man Pol along on the journey to retrieve the Gift from its hiding spot.

So far this sounds like a normal quest fantasy, enlivened with humor and questions about Gen, and The Thief is a quest on the surface.  It is more.  The characters are well done, with betrayal, mystery, and a background of geopolitical reality that drives the magus on his hunt.  If the magus is right then the three countries must ally to keep themselves whole.  Turner left enough open to write several sequels but The Thief is a complete novel on its own.

Most of the libraries shelve The Thief under YA fantasy.  The book will appeal to teens but it has enough complexity and interesting characters that adults can enjoy it too.  It’s not long, about 220 pages, and a fast read without a ton of elaborate writing.  The small number of characters, about 12 altogether, keeps it easy to follow, no hunting back and forth to remember who is who.

Turner so vividly describes the terrain with cliffs, ravines, arid volcanic residues, olive groves that you feel you would recognize the country if you saw it.  A map would have been a plus.

Overall I enjoyed The Thief.  The tension between Gen and the magus, Gen and the two young nobles, and finally between Gen and the goddess make the book lively and the rich characters make it an enjoyable, satisfying read.  4 Stars.

 

Midnight Riot or Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – Wizard vs. Revenant

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One of the best lines in Rivers of London is Inspector Nightingale’s answer to Peter’s question about wizards:

“No.  Not like Harry Potter.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a fictional character.”

Yes, magic is real; wizards are real; ghosts and vampires and revenants are real. Father Thames, the spirit of Thames upriver of London, is real as is his rival Mother Thames who handles everything from London to the sea.

My copy is titled Midnight Riot, apparently the UK version is named Rivers of London.  Don’t worry, it’s the same book and it’s good.

Plot Quickie

Peter Grant is nearly through with probationary status in London’s police and is ready for assignment to something – hopefully something more exciting than the you-are-making-a-valuable-contribution-Case-Progression-Unit where he would shuffle papers when he wasn’t creating papers.  Peter meets a ghost while checking the area where a man was murdered near Covent Garden.  Peter doesn’t believe in ghosts but comes back a few nights later to ask the ghost a question; that is when he meets Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the only wizard currently employed by London’s finest and in fact the only wizard in London (or possibly the only one in the UK at all).

Nightingale recruits Peter (anything to avoid Case Progression) to help him since at the moment Nightingale is feeling a bit worried about the lack of magical manpower and other problems are poking up that need a wizard’s attention.  We have a case of vampires, a brooding feud between the spirits of the Thames, and a spate of completely irrational, vicious attacks.

Peter works with his friend Leslie, a more successful copper of the standard variety, Nightingale, assorted detectives, Molly the vampiric housekeeper, the children of the warring Thames clans and assorted opera goers and tenors to solve the mystery of the attacks and return London to its more-or-less peaceful self.

Characters

Peter is great.  Midnight Riot is written first person with Peter the narrator so we see everything through his eyes.   Other people see Peter as easily distracted but from our viewpoint, riding along in his head, he makes perfect sense.  Peter makes intuitive jumps and he is curious about things that seem peripheral to others but are in fact quite important.

Peter is resourceful, as witness by his method to bring peace between the Thames’ families and smart.  He figures out who is harboring the spirit that is causing the distressing attacks and cruel murders and is able to time his final intervention to save the spirit’s host from bleeding to death.

We see Leslie through Peter’s eyes and her words and how she compares herself and Peter.  She is a little less finely developed than Peter but interesting and I’m looking forward to meeting her again in the next book.

Inspector Nightingale and his peers in the more mundane side of the London constabulary are interesting too and poke up just often enough to keep us interested.  Peter’s mum and father play bit roles and I’d enjoy knowing his unflappable mum.

Summary

Midnight Riot is the first in a series featuring our hero Peter Grant.   I enjoyed the tight plotting and character development and am picking up two more books from our interlibrary loan system tomorrow!