Rivers of London (Peter Grant #1) ★★★☆ ½

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Title: Rivers of London

Series: Peter Grant #1

Author: Ben Aaronovich

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Pages: 396

Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Peter Grant is a constable in good ol' Merry England. Of course, he's not actually a very good constable. In fact,he's being shuffled over to the section that deals with all that nasty paperwork stuff, because there, he'll be “making a contribution”.

Until the night that he sees a ghost while guarding a murder scene.

He then is taken as the apprentice to the apparantly sole magical cop and starts hunting down the killer from the murder scene. With the help of the ghost, Father Thames and Mother Thames (who are having a turf war at the moment), his friend who he wants to be more than a friend and his “Master”.

Peter Grant solves the case, but not without several instances of random people beating each other to death with a 4foot club and then having their faces fall off. Oh,and don't forget the riot filled with all the cultured people from the opera, who go out for a night of looting, vandalism and a little murder on the side.

Along with all this, it is up to Peter, as part of his apprenticeship, to solve the problem of the Thames'.

That's asking a bit much from a loser like Peter who can't concentrate on one thing for more than 10minutes.

My Thoughts:

I read the Gollancz edition of this book, which is the proper English release. I kind of wish I had read the American release entitled Midnight Riot. One, I think that Midnight Riot is much more of an apt title for this book's specific villain and two, I would hope that some of the slang would be changed to make actual sense to someone who doesn't live in downtown London. It might have been English, but it wasn't the Queen's English, that is for sure.

And that was about my only complaint.

I don't enjoy Urban Fantasy for the most part, not even Harry Dresden. But every once in a while a book or series will transcend the inherent weakness in this sub-genre, the cliched banality, the soap opera level pointless dramatics, the “makes no sense whatsoever” so called romance and impress me. So I tend to be rather hard on the poor book when it comes from “that side of the tracks”. Oh, all those “quotes”? Another thing I hate about UF.

But this isn't a rant about me hating on UF. It is a review of a book that I rather enjoyed when I wasn't sure I was going to or not.

There was a lot more dry humor than I was expecting. For about the first 75% anyway. I enjoyed the style of humor and never found it boring or over the top. Then things got serious and the humor went away. I missed that. The magic system wasn't explained, but since I'm not a huge “give me the details” kind of guy when it comes to spaceships or magic, I was pretty ok with that. I know some people thrive on “world building” like that though, so be aware.

The Rivers of London bit was well done too. Every river having its own little godling? And it all being a family thing? Top notch. We'll see how, or if, it plays into the series in a bigger way or not. But considering that one of the nyads has a thing for old Petey and he's not saying no, and his friend/dream lover that will never be, is potentially out of the picture and that Peter pissed off one of the older nyads, well, there is just too much potential story there to let it all go to waste.

Glad I started this and I hope it continues strong. If the series stays as good as this story, I'll probably be bumping my ratings up to at least a 4star.

★★★☆ ½