a_cubed | Books – Rivers of London

Trying to catch up on the backlog of books to write up, instead of writing them in strict reading order I’ll try to keep up with current reading as well as fill in the missed ones over time.

This is Ben Aaronovitch first novel in his own universe, I think. He’s had some official Dr Who novels published before. This is back to modern urban fantasy, subsets being The Veil (weird stuff happens but is not acknowledged by authority or visible to most people) and Police Procedural. My knowledge of police procedures is limited, but he doesn’t drop any howlers that I noticed, so I was OK with that. The plot is interesting and very much based on London as a genuis loci (there’s been a lot of fiction and fantasy in particular centring on London over the years and this pulls it of well). While it’s a bit of a kitchen sink subset of urban fantasy (everything you ever thought of, and more, exists, but they manage The Veil anyway) he doesn’t overload the plot with too many extraneous beasties as some tend to in this subgenre. The character is likeable and pretty believable. The first person narrative has one odd quirk which keep bringing me up short, though. While the grammar is perfect despite being first person (it’s a choice when writing first person whether to stick to proper written grammar or get more in keeping with the character’s speaking mode) he uses one idiosyncracy (me and X did this thing). He overuses it a bit and would, I think, have been better just using “we” a bit more often – “X and I sounds too much like the Queen”. When used, it would mostly have been obvious which people the hanging anaphora dereferenced to and then the occasional usage when it needed clarification wouldn’t drop me out of the internal movie as often.

Still, a good first own-world novel (if that’s what it is) and a decent start to a series. I’m on book two now with book three in the list for when it comes out later this year.

Current Mood: (tired)

tired