Thursday, January 3, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Midnight Riot/Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch




Midnight Riot (originally published in the UK as Rivers of London) is the first in Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" or "Peter Grant" series of urban fantasy novels, featuring Constable Peter Grant as an apprentice wizard/cop in modern day London.  The series was one of the first ones nominated for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Series, and as such it's been on my list of books to read for a while - and when the newest in the series got hyped about by authors I follow, I figured now as a good time.

Unfortunately, I didn't love the first book.  Some of that may have been due to the audiobook reader (see below), but while the worldbuilding was really well done and intriguing, I kinda didn't like the lead character and narrator - I kept yelling at him while listening in the car for not doing things I thought of as obvious and he was kind of an ass.  I may take a look at the second book to see if it gets better since I know so many people love the series, but the result was a bit of a miss for me.


Note:  I read this as an Audiobook, and I STRONGLY recommend not reading the book in that format.  The audiobook reader rushes through the book by seeming to try to read full sentences in a single breath and then taking huge notable gasps when he inevitably runs out of breath every five seconds.  This often results in awkward pauses in the middle of paragraphs, in addition to just being distracting to hear the reader breathing in every few seconds.  You would be better off reading this book in print/ebook than audiobook and if I go forward with the series, that's how I will.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Constable Peter Grant of the London Police is just about to be assigned to his permanent division (he's hoping for the Murder team) when a strange murder occurs in London.  To make it stranger, upon being left at the scene for clean-up, Peter finds an eyewitness to the murder only he can see: a ghost.  So when Peter is finally assigned his role, naturally it's to the strangest role possible - to the one man unit of Thomas Nightingale, the Wizard who protects London from the Supernatural.

But Peter won't have much time to try and learn about the supernatural and magic in London - for the strange murder was only the start of events occurring in London.  Some force is causing people to go into murderous rages and commit horrible acts of violence, and the force's influence is only spreading.  And while this is going on, river nymphs of London's oft-forgotten waterways, and the Embodiments of the Thames river are being driven into conflict, with Peter being forced to mediate.

It will be up to Peter and his easily distractable but scientific mind to discover enough about magic to solve the situations...before London goes up in flames.
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Rivers of London sets up a really interesting urban fantasy world as Peter - the newcomer to magic - gets introduced to the world by Thomas Nightingale, who generally responds to all of Peter's speculations about what's out there with a nod and the affirmative.  Like a lot of urban fantasy, the story takes the approach that practically everything fantasy is real and hidden in the real world, although most of that isn't because the magic/magical creatures are hidden in secret as much as the real world is doing a real damn good job ignoring everything unnatural.

And this works rather well in Aaronovitch's story, and some of the versions of our typical creatures are done in what to me were new and different ways.  The eponymous Rivers of London (well for the original title) for example aren't the first time I've seen a fantasy character have to deal with the personification of a landmark, but the families that Peter meets are particularly amusing in how they manifest those abilities that they feel unique.  And each of the beings Peter meets are particularly interesting in their own ways, such as the aforementioned rivers (such as Beverly Brook or Lady Ti), the lady of the Folly, named Molly, and Nightingale himself.

That said, I didn't particularly love this book because of the most important aspect: the main character himself.  Again, some of this may have been caused by the audiobook reader's narration, but Peter is seemingly a lot of things that would be right up my alley and yet I found him annoying.  He's a scientific minded character who wants to understand how magic works and is immensely curious to the point of being noticeably distractable, which are all traits that appeal to me....except he's immensely slow on the uptake at times for someone with this mindset.  There were numerous times I was yelling at him in the car (fun with audiobooks yall!) for taking too long to think of what I thought was obvious, which got rather irritating.

And then there's the amount of time he thinks with his dick, which I found kind of annoying in addition to everything else?  The book doesn't really consider the possibility that either of Peter's crushes may or may not be interested in him in that way, and since the book is told from Peter's first person narration, it feels like Peter isn't concerned as to that either.  So the numerous times that Peter talks about wishing that his partner would come into his bed feels really off, and it's a constant theme.

I'll probably give book 2 a try as an ebook to see if the series gets better because of the raves its gotten from authors I like, but I may drop it very quickly if I just can't find Peter a better character going forward.  It just didn't work for me - it's not a character archetype I really care to read when all things are considered.



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