Book review: Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch

[lucymonster]

This is police procedural meets Harry Potter and every bit as fun as it sounds. Rookie London cop Peter Grant discovers that magic is real and gets recruited to the Met's paranormal taskforce, which up until his joining consisted of just one member: the mysteriously ageless Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, a trained wizard from a once-flourishing British magical tradition that was brought to near extinction during World War II. Under Nightingale's two-pronged guidance as senior officer and magic instructor, Peter sets about bringing the long arm of the law to bear on ghosts, goblins, vampires and black magicians.

I'm finding these books compulsively readable. I've swallowed the first four in quick succession, and they're only getting stronger as the series progresses. Book one was fun but shallow; book two was a bit of a mess; books three made me half-forget my complaints about book two; and book four was so powerful that I think I need to sit with it a while and digest before continuing my binge, but oh man, pausing is HARD. The series has been following your classic "monster of the week plus overarching big bad" structure, and the latter plot has picked up so much momentum at this point that it's all I can think about. There is SO MUCH action and excitement and cool worldbuilding happening, with lots of humour, flashes of violence and a pleasingly creepy sprinkle of magical body horror.

I will say that early on Aaronovitch is a bit weird about women, in an over-the-top horny way that hits me as benign but very off-putting. Peter has a lot of sex in book two, which is most of what makes that one a mess - but I guess he got some stuff out of his system, because the dick-brained nonsense tapers off sharply after that, and the female characters start to really shine in their own right. Lesley May is my precious darling beloved who has never done anything wrong in her life. I feel like me naming her as fave is a slight spoiler for anyone who knows how my tastes run, but what can I do?

I'll also say that I've needed my phone handy as I read to look up reference images and bits of architectural jargon. Aaronovitch is obsessed with London as a physical place, and spills quite a lot of ink describing its geography and urban environment. On the one hand, 'how old is this building' and 'what materials and methods were used in its fabrication' are not questions I generally find interesting for their own sake, especially not when alternative avenues of inquiry such as 'how does magic work' and 'I'm sorry, that demonic serial killer did WHAT to his latest victim?' are right there in front of me. But on the other hand, I thought this way of viewing the world really worked for Peter as a character: he's a young male cop with a procedural mindset, a high adrenaline tolerance, a keen eye for detail and a tin ear for all things emotional, so his ability to pick out the differences between late Victorian and early Edwardian terrace construction techniques while being chased by a supernatural thug with a Sten gun felt at least as much like authentic characterisation as authorial indulgence.

So, yeah, this is my new obsession. It doesn't have a lot of fannish potential for me personally (though I'd give a lot for some good fanart of Lesley) but there are a lot more books to go so I have plenty of canonical fun still waiting!

Comments

[verdande_mi]

I love this series. I was a bit meh with the first book, but everyone and the world just grew on me. I look forward to reading more in 2025.

[lucymonster]

The world and the system of magic have gotten more and more engrossing the more time I spend with them! I've just finished book seven which wraps up the main plotline, and I can't tell from the blurbs of later novels whether they're going to feature my favourite characters in any meaningful role - it felt like their arcs were pretty well wrapped up. I'm taking a breather either way to read some other things, but if Lesley comes back, so will I!