Friday, March 20, 2015

The 'Rivers of London' novels by Ben Aaronovitch - Urban fantasy at its lively best.


Something about this series caught my eye somewhere, somehow, and you know how that goes. My local library only had one book available - NOT the first in the series - so I ordered the first, RIVERS OF LONDON (aka MIDNIGHT RIOT), online, read that, then jumped to next to last, the very excellent BROKEN HOMES, which was the one and only title the library had, and then I was on to the almost as equally excellent FOXGLOVE SUMMER  which is the latest book and not the second or the third. Luckily, I'm not anal about reading things in order - except sometimes.

I'm pleased to say that this is a series that just gets better and better and that's not easy to do when I remind myself how absurdly high-concept the first book, RIVERS OF LONDON, actually was. Not an easy act to follow, by any means. This is a hellish brew of CSI, police procedural and Harry Potter, all set in a gritty modern day London and its environs. Lots of gory doings when you involve practitioners of magic, spells and general witch-craftery with the Metropolitan police and even, tiny as the department may be, within the actual police force, since crimes involving skulduggery of the magical sort must, of course, be handled by specialists.

Very understandably, it takes a wizard to catch a wizard - but don't get us started on fairies, unicorns and werewolves, not to mention the gods and goddesses of the River Thames. And no, here they are not, in general, the sugary benign (well, except for the werewolves) creatures we're used to reading about in other venues.

Enter our dynamic duo: the very enigmatic Inspector Nightingale, he of the mysterious background, a cop/wizard who's been around since before WWII and is not necessarily showing his age and his current apprentice (the first in fifty years), the laconic constable Peter Grant who discovers, one night, while out on patrol, that he can see dead people. That is, the specters of the dead.

Needless to say, Grant is immediately recruited by Nightingale - who happens to be lurking about - as a trainee wizard in an adjutant section of the Metropolitan Police Force so secret that most don't know it exists and is only reluctantly called into action when supernatural forces are suspected at a crime scene. (Wouldn't you love to see the guys who bring us Law and Order tackle this one? Bom. Bom.)

This is a London (with occasional trips to the countryside, as in FOXGLOVE SUMMER) not so beloved by tourists, the London of grisly doings, bad traffic and blood-thirsty specters of the night.

In the hands of a less talented writer than Ben Aaronovitch this might have been just another fantasy pastiche, but this guy really knows how to write, seems to know how the police force actually works and better yet, he KNOWS the highways and byways of London - so we have plenty of gritty verisimilitude. It's the kind of deal where while you're reading you're believing that this sort of thing actually exists. Wizard cops, I mean. It all makes some kind of loony sense. Suspension of disbelief. You know how much we love when that happens smoothly and naturally.

Plus the tales are told in first person narration, which I also love. Especially when the narrator, in this instance, the young and often bemused cop/wizard-in-training, Peter Grant, is such a delightful person to spend time with. He is an engaging combo of laid-back cynical with a dash of stalwart and the occasional flash of sleuthing brilliance. Plus, it's interesting to have a hero who is of mixed race (his mother is from Senegal), especially in stories set in London and thereabouts.

All in all, a terrific series well worth your time even if you normally aren't fascinated by this sort of thing which I generally am not. Except when it's this well done.

Warning: There are, here and there, some rather gruesome crimes involved, so take heed. But if I didn't succumb to the vapors, neither should you. 

19 comments:

  1. Yvette, I'll be reading this author if not all of the series for I have heard and read a lot about it. This particular book does seem to have a little bit of everything in terms of genres, like crime, mystery, fantasy, paranormal, and adventure.

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    1. Yes, and somehow it all works, Prashant. I have to give credit to the author for being able to bring it off. Especially when so much of this stuff is out there and so much of it is just plain badly done. I am eagerly awaiting the next book in this series, since FOXGLOVE was so good.

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  2. I read the first of these and really enjoyed them (I was already a fan of the author's TV work for DOCTOR WHO I might add) - glad to hear the rest are good too - must catch up! Thanks Yvette.

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    1. Oh, did you write about it, Sergio? I missed it if you did. Then I urge you not to miss BROKEN HOMES, most especially.

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  3. Despite the gorgeous covers, I've been avoiding this series, since I'm not normally a fan of urban fantasy. You have at least given me some food for thought, and I'm going to be rethinking my strategy of avoidance.

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    1. Oh, Ryan, don't miss this series. I avoid certain types of books too, except when they are this well done. I also love a book that makes me laugh in spite of myself.

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  4. Yvette,

    Sounds interesting. Thanks for providing the alternate title. The public library here has Midnight Riot, as well as three or four other titles.

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    1. Fred, you have to be in a mood, but if you feel like you are, then by all means, take the books home. I haven't read them in row, as I mentioned in the post. But the three I've read were terrific. And because of certain things happening, I probably won't read the second and third books, but I'll definitely read the next in line. NOTHING can top BROKEN HOMES or FOXGLOVE SUMMER which I enjoyed even more than the first in the series.

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  5. Yvette,

    The idea of combining a police procedural, involving a special unit to investigate crimes involving magic, etc. is interesting, especially since I read another novel which also took place in London along with fantasy elements and a special unit of the police that worked those cases.

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    1. What was the novel you read, Fred? I hadn't heard of another doing just this sort of thing. But I'd still give Aaronovich a try. He's a terrific writer. If you don't care about continuity, try BROKEN HOMES first.

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  6. Yvette, I have read the first three and want to read Broken Homes. Maybe soon. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed these books. Very nice review.

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    1. Thanks, Tracy. I too was surprised by how much I enjoyed these. Don't you love when that happens? I put off reading them for a while thinking well, maybe I won't. But I'm so glad I did. Waiting eagerly for the next installment.

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  7. Yvette,

    The title is _Kraken_, and the author is China Mieville. It's a weird one, about the cult of the giant squid and various "interested" parties.

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    1. Oh yes, I read that one too, Fred. But these books are very different from Mieville's.

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  8. Yvette,

    No doubt, as Mielville is very different from everybody. He's been called the Father of the New Weird Wave in SF/F.

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    1. Have you read THE CITY AND THE CITY? by Mieville? I loved it. Even better than Kraken which I had a hard time with near the end.

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    2. Yvette,

      Oh yes, The City and the City-- one of his best, if not his best so far. I recommended it for an F-T-F SF/F group I belong to. Great tale, great concept. I got it first from the library but after a few chapters, I went out and bought a copy--this was a keeper.

      Yes, Kraken did go over the top a bit at the end, but that's Mieville.

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  9. I really enjoyed the first one which I read as MIDNIGHT RIOT. Reminded me of the early Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher. I bought MIDNIGHT RIOT and MOON OVER SOHO together but never got around to reading the second book. A while ago by sheer chance I found a copy of BROKEN HOMES and bought that one thinking it was the third then saw inside the cover that here was another book I was unaware of. I keep hoping I'll find that one -- WHISPERS UNDER GROUND -- one of these days and then I can read these in order. But I'm inundated with research/reading for the two books I've been asked to contribute to and I'm now completely taken up with that extensive work.

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    1. No one ever contacted me about that idea of yours for me to contribute, John. So I guess I'm not doing anything. At any rate, make time to read BROKEN HOMES which is my fave next to FOXGLOVE SUMMER. :)

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