Midnight Riot (Rivers of London) Mass Market Paperback – February 1, 2011

Firstly, this book was excellent. It was interesting, contained engrossing characters, a nicely thought out mystery to solve, and was so real that I was struck by the sudden urge to pack up and move to London. Fabulous. I had some things that didn't work for me, but they were few and far between, and they were more matters of personal preference than anything actually wrong with the story.Rating: 4/5 StarsThe Book: Rivers of London/Midnight Riot by Ben AaronovitchWhy the two names? It's a "The philosopher's stone/The sorcerer's stone" affair. For some reason, the rest of the books in the series have the same name regardless of which edition (UK/american), is published. The covers are also the same on the rest of the books. The first one though, has two covers:Normally I wouldn't go on about this, but it's interesting to note that they've pretty much hidden the protagonist Peter Grant in shadow in the American version. Given that the protagonist is black, it's been... suggested that there's a reason you can't tell that from the front cover. I mean, really, if you're going to show the main character on the cover, show the main character on the cover.The UK versions have an excuse - the City of London is quite clearly the main character in this book, and they've accordingly whacked her on the front cover. Anyway. On to the actual review:Overview:Peter Grant is a constable who has just finished a probationary period of two years, and is about to receive his first assignment. His closest friend and fellow constable is Leslie May. Just before they're both assigned their new commissions, a murder takes place in the London theatre district. While they're watching the crime scene after everyone important has left, a ghost shows up to talk to Peter, and informs him that all is not as it seems. Leslie is subsequently assigned to the division working on the murder, while Peter is picked up as an apprentice by one Mr Nightingale, a Chief Detective Inspector and the magical division of the metropolitan police force. The murder turns is not the last of it's kind, and the rest of the book covers Peter learning his magic, a fight over territory between The Goddess of the River and the God of the River (he skipped town when the river was almost drowned to death in pollution, and now he wants back in), and figuring out the perpetrator behind the murders and bringing him to justice.Things I liked: The construction of the bookThis was a well constructed book, with everything fitting nicely together, every seemingly innocent bit of detail mattering. If something was described it was character building, or foreshadowing. Never was a scene just there for one singular reason, except in maybe two or three small cases. The pacingIn the pacing, this book reminded me a bit of Harry Potter. Not because of the british thing, but more because of the way the author manipulated time. There was a fair bit of "summing up" when events happen that needed to be mentioned, but weren't truely important, and this gave the sense of quite a lot of time passing in a small number of words. On the flip side of the coin, the author also knew how to show things playing out in greater detail, to give the sense of time stretching. He used it quite a lot throughout. The magic systemThis was really quite cool. Magic relies on holding a "forma" in one's mind, and stringing a number of forma together to make a spell. Nightingale goes about Peter's training in a traditional manner, while Peter uses his magic to experiment with magic's use on technology. It's all very interesting. Also, there appears to be another, more innate level of magic, which the local spirits, god and goddesses rely on. Peter's voiceWhile I'm not employed as a paramedic yet, most of the people I hand around with are on their way to being there, and I do 480 hours of placement in the ambulance service here - and Peter's voice is pretty much spot on for the type of people you meet in emergency services. Very practical, very straightforwards, slightly self suffereing, an ironic deadpan sense of humour... it's great. I could really see him as a police office. Also, the way he describes the buraecracy of a major event, and of emergency services in general - also spot on. It was great, it was like I was recognising people I knew whenever a new character was introduced. The detail (especially the human detail) of LondonI think the author paid almost as much attention to the world building of the "mundane" world as he did the fantastical side of things. Lots of details, and lots of human details. i loved the reality of the book. Unfortunately, books tend to be a bit white washed sometimes, and this book was not only filled with a diversity of character from different backgrounds, but the implications and consequences of those background were there. Leslie jokes with him about being able to move to America and act as a double for the president, Peter is briefly worried the police force is going to deploy him to work undercover in the drug squad that deals mainly with the black community. There's one scene on the train, when he's injured: "I was sending out mixed signals; the suit and reassuring countenance of my face went one way, the fact that I’d obviously been in a fight recently and was mixed race went the other. It’s a myth that Londoners are oblivious to one another on the tube; we’re hyper aware of each other and are constantly revising our what-if scenarios and counterstrategies. What if that suavely handsome yet ethnic young man asks me for money, do I give or refuse; if he makes a joke, do I respond and if so, will it be a shy smile or a guffaw? If he’s hurt in a fight, does he need help? If I help him, will I find myself drawn into a threatening situation, or an adventure, or a wild interracial romance?" Aaronovitch, Ben (2011-02-01). Midnight Riot (Peter Grant) (pp. 187-188). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.It doesn't pretend. It doesn't make an issue of his race, or the background of the other characters, but they're still living in the world we're living in, and still facing the incidental products of our collective history. It's great - I've honestly not read a book that manages to not ignore the issues of this world without making those issues their primary focus. Maybe I'm just not the well read. But I loved it. The revelation of who was behind the murder'sThis was quite neatly done, and made some of the coincidences in the book much less of a coincidence and more of a bad omen. Again, very nicely done.Things I didn't like:More what I wasn't so sure of in this case Show don't tell - a little too far on the show side for meAfter I finished this book, I looked up the author, and as far as I can tell, he started writing in TV. You can tell - for a book told from first person, there was a remarkable lack of internal thoughts regarding some things from Peter. For example, most of the main supporting character you meet. He has very little in the way on an opinion about them, and as such, they seem very two dimensional until Peter has interacted with them in a variety of capacities. Leslie, for example, seemed stock standard love interest. Their relationships as half friends, maybe something more, and her own uniqueness only became apparent after another chapter or so. Nightingale took even longer to get to know, because Peter only initially interacted with him an a working relationship. Thus, he seemed very... bland, until about halfway through the book.I knew the character by the time I needed to know and care about them, but it took quite a while. The lack of internal emotion from PeterThis was another this that comes from the show don't tell thing. I missed the internal emotional reactions that normally come with first person. Peter's voice is very good, but it missed this. For example, when someone close to him is shot, we know how he feels because he considers running and doesn't because he wants to protect the person injured. But that's all sort of infered. He could be terrified. But of what? This person dying, getting injured himself, keeping his city/family/Leslie safe? Worried that the backup won't get there in time? It's impossible to tell, because there's no internal emotional reaction to anything. It's all infered. And in a way, this is good, because it's new to me, and it forces me to be involved in the story, but on the other hand, I miss that level of internal connection with the character. Talking HeadsOccasionally, when a conversation was shown, there was the back and forth of the conversation, and Peter's reaction to that conversation was only shown after it was done. It was a bit jarring, as I spent a fair bit of time in that conversation going "why isn't he more surprised/annoyed/terrified/confused by this." I felt a bit "in the dark" at times. A scene or two that just seemed there for no good reason.There were three scenes that just seemed to be there. Normally, that honestly wouldn't have bothered me, but given how well structured all the scenes and acts were, it was noticeable when things didn't seem to have a plot reason for existing. One of these was justified later, two of the others never really were. They were tiny little things, but because the rest of the book was so well done, it was jarringly noticeable..

There are a lot of good things in this first book of the series. But one of them is not fast. This is definitely a slow version of urban-style fantasy. Despite this, the author’s writing style is clean and succinct. The plot moves along on well defined lines with occasional and appropriately timed twists. Compared to similar fantasy stories the magic in this book is less prominent and more “earthy,” meaning there’s less “Marvel-style” flash and bang. The magic seems to come from within, whether it be the soul of the caster or the soul of the environment (rivers, buildings, locations, etc.). There’s a lot of English slang here which caused me to look up terms in order to get the gist of some of the dialogue. Some may find the pace too slow and the magic too meager…so if you’re looking for nonstop action this may not be for you. To me, this is a solid mystical story that moves unhurriedly to a satisfying conclusion.

Peter Grant is a London police officer going on with his ordinary life. He has a washed-up jazz artist father, a complicated African mother, and a female best friend and lust object. He is also curious and highly distractible. I found this a sympathetic character trait. On a night much like any other, he is standing around at a crime scene when a ghost tells him about the murder most foul, as ghosts are wont to do. His life gets a lot more complicated all of a sudden, what with a smelly ghost-finding dog, a strangely ageless magical mentor, and an assignment to the X Files of the London constabulary.I bought this book because the publishers made a questionable decision about the cover. There has been some awareness on the parts of the internet that I frequent that publishers targeting American audiences "whitewash" their covers. The most famous example that I can think of was Justine Larbalestier's Liar, which is about a biracial protaganist. The original proposed cover showed a white girl. The publisher was convinced to change the cover, but it took some doing. There are pictures of the original and modified covers of the Aaronovitch books at Neth Space. In researching the whitewashing, I thought the book sounded interesting, and bought the first one. 26 hours and some lost sleep later, I bought the second one. One of the blurbs said it was like "Harry Potter meets CSI". I thought it was more like "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality meet Sherlock".I liked Midnight Riot for many of the same reasons I liked Laura Bickle's Embers: the sense of place and space is palpable. Bickle's protaganist, Anya, lives in the current Detroit, a once-great city suffering through very hard times. Her details about empty blocks, shuttered buildings, and potholed roads give a good grounding to the otherworldliness of the action. Similarly, Aaronovitch's London is not an idealized London, or a sketchily detailed Major City. If this book were a TV show, it would be hard to film in Vancouver, because it is so very much about place, and neighborhood, and history. This is the London I catch glimpses of from the BBC, full of kebab stands and chavs and trainers and sewers and public transit. I think this would be a difficult book to read if you did not have that ability, beloved of scifi and fantasy readers, to just accept that you don't know all the words and probably you'll get them from context.Peter Grant knows the city as a beat cop. He identifies everywhere he goes on a sliding scale of how many drunks he has rousted and fights he has broken up. Places can be historic, or architectural, but he is always evaluating them first in terms of public safety. Even when he is having a mind-blowing tryst with a new lover, he notes the fire escapes and weak points of the flat. He walks into rooms and scans them for threats, he is always aware of his surroundings with the police part of his brain.He is also always aware of his surroundings in a racial way. It's not like he's a seething ball of biracial resentment, he just notices that he moves through a racial society. When he has had a rough day and is taking the Tube home, he watches people try to evaluate whether he seems more or less threatening than the homeless man. When he agrees to apprentice to a magical trainer, he refuses to address him as "Master", because while it might be traditional, he can't help hearing it as "Massa", and he will not do it. It reminded me, in a way, of walking around as a woman, and the thousand calculations that I make and almost don't notice I'm making them, thinking about keeping an eye on strangers who get into my personal space, and who to sit next to on the train, and how vulnerable I look when I'm walking, and where I could head for if I needed help. I am by no means a woman nervous of the big city, nor do I think I'm afraid, and I may not even be alert, but I am aware. Midnight Riot made me think about how that awareness might look on a different axis.The language delighted me. There were little poem fragments scattered all through it, not as actual quotations, but as the sort of side reference-in joke that pop culture ends up being transmitted as. For example, there is a flip reference to "some corner which forever", in reference to the Rupert Brooke poem, The Soldier. Also, his ghost/magic sensitive dog is of the little yappy variety, and he identifies magic intensity he encounters by the "milliyap", as measured by how much the dog is likely to react to it. It's not obtrusive, not Pratchett-like levels of self-aware flipness, just the kind of language play and use that my friends and I sometimes indulge in.I thought the plot was not astonishing. This is not a book you read for the tight, mechanical, magical interlocking plot points. It loafs along with the easy inevitability of Agatha Christie mystery. A bad person does something wrong, and our hero, by application of his unique personal skills, solves it in a way that no one else could have. Grant's unique skills include magic, a passion for the scientific method, and a millenial's facility with technology. Oh, and a hummingbird-like distractability. He is no respecter of tradition, which makes his mentor more than a little irritated, but his wildcat style works for him.The plot is not the story's heart, though. The actual passion of the story is split between the setting, both real and mystical, of London, and the character development of a nice-enough guy who is trying to figure out how to be the best copper he can be. The setting is rich and surprising and charming. The guy is not at all rich, but somewhat surprising and quite charming. And the story has that sort of roll and rhythm that makes you keep telling yourself "just one more chapter".Read if: you like police procedurals, the Lord Darcy books, urban fantasy about actual places, and drawing maps in your head.Skip if: you don't like first-person narrators, or mystery stories. You would rather not read about gritty London as seen through the eyes of a police constable old enough to be cynical.

What started off on a high with a really intriguing premise and displays of the sarcastic, witty humour that I love to read, I'm disappointed to say I really didn't enjoy it all that much in the end. It was described as a mix between police detective work and magic but there wasn't enough magic in it and what magic there was didn't seem very relevant to the story, more like an add-on.The main character just went along with things far too easily making the whole story unbelievable - yes fantasy is supposed to be made up, but the story should feel as if it could be real and I really didn't get that with this book. I didn't think much of the main character, Peter Grant, either for he seemed far too preoccupied with the shape of a woman's hips or breasts than anything else; there was too much unnecessary mentioning of breasts brushing against him and it was so annoying to read again and again and again.I feel as though the story got lost and a bit too off-topic with lots of different characters involved that in the end, I lost where we were and what was happening. But by then I didn't really care much so I just went along with it. There was lots of detail about London and random facts interwoven into the story but unfortunately it didn't feel as though much attention was given to creating a page-turning plot and I just carried on in the hope it would pick up.This book wasn't for me and I won't be continuing with the series.

This first book in the PC Peter Grant series starts off in quite a riotous manner, what with a headless corpse, a spectral eye-witness to the grisly murder off Covent Garden, and an elusive suspect who seems able to change his clothes (and face) with supernatural speed to escape detection by CCTV cameras.Throw in the warring gods, Father and Mama Thames, and the latter’s bewitching daughters, who rule over their respective tributaries, an officially-sanctioned detective-wizard, Thomas Nightingale, who heads his own investigative department of supernatural crime of sorts, and at the heart of it, the hapless police constable Peter Grant, who is roped in as his apprentice right after his probationary stint to solve the case of the headless corpse, and we have a supernatural urban fantasy mystery thriller. The writing is humorous and Grant’s bumbling, everyman character, makes for an entertaining read.The magic in the novel is also dealt with in a logical manner, and it is believable how Grant struggles to form a werelight as his induction into wizardry by picturing a “forma” in his head, and his hyperawareness of supernatural presence, or their afterimage, through “vestigial”, also makes the juxtaposition between the supernatural and the normal environs quite palpable. It is however in the Folly, Nightingale’s abode and headquarters, that I felt the book gave way to sketchy caricature. There is the requisite otherworldly housekeeper with questionable culinary skills, who is not unlike a ghost/vampire out of a Japanese horror film/anime, complete with long black hair, togged out in Edwardian maid uniform, hisses rather than speaks, and who practically glides around the cavernous halls at incredible speed.The novel seems a promising start to a light and entertaining series, but if the Kindle version which I read from is anything to go by, it is in desperate need of better editing and proofreading, because the typos were just too glaring to be ignored, and marred much of my enjoyment of the book.

I was recommended this by a work colleague of mine as we were both fans of the Harry Dresden series and this, in concept anyway, is a bit similar. Enter Peter Grant, a Police Constable for the London Metropolitan Police. One dreary night while standing guard at a crime scene a witness approaches him to give a testomony on the murder that happened there the night before. Unfortunately for Peter that witness is himself, also dead, a ghost. Not sure if he's going crazy or not until a detective approaches him and asks him to join his divison, a part of the Police the Met know about and do their best to forget exits that look into such things...The story is great and the characters are all a mixture of the weird and wonderful as Peter slowly finds out about ghosts, wizards and various things he didn't think were real as the case unfolds. Ben Aaronovitch the author used to write for Doctor Who and it shows as not only are many aspects of it very imaginitive but often it's also very funny. The humour is very British, not just in it's style but the many cultural references and satire that would I think be lost on a lot of people who hadn't lived here. That's not say the book is a comedy, just it has great moments and one liners. The actual tone of the plot is pretty dark with some pretty horrible things happening to people during the case. I enjoyed it immensely and went onto read the next five books currently out.If I had to say anything negative about the book it's that at times the lead character has a bit of a lack of emotional reactions to situations that you would expect. One instance in particular felt really jarring, it doesn't ruin the book but stood out to me because the rest of it is so well done.Recommended.+ Great story and characters+ Genuinely funny in places.+ Great pacing.- Some of Grants reactions seem a little detatched at times.

Funny and smart - not an ar3e way, in an entertaining way. Most books, I can come and go from as my day dictates, but I actually smuggled this one into work so I could keep reading! :DWell rounded characters, great plot, brilliant staging/place setting. A lovely example of speculative fictional realism (meaning you don't have to to constantly refer to your 'encyclopaedia magica' or need a handy 3 page pull out of maps, family tree's and excerpts from the monster book of monsters that some speculative fiction requires)The author has a fantastic skill of imparting his knowledge of London (be it an existing passion or via extensive research, it makes no mind to me) cleverly woven into the prose. Rather than him forcing a metaphorical bookmark into the flow of the story, he let's his protagonist Peter, be the brains of the outfit.To impart factoids via a story without it turning into an info-dump is a very hard thing to do, so HUZZAH to you Mr Aaronovitch! (Unless of course you're powered by the Illuminati, then boo-hiss for cheating!) ;D <3I know I'm very late to Ben's party, but the upside for me being it's a long series of 8 books (so far...?) for me to binge! I've already bought books 2 & 3 in anticipation. Can't envisage much work getting done over the next few weeks!NOTE TO THE PUBLISHING TEAM.The kindle edition has quite a few typo's that need to be addressed, the most obvious being, someone needs to come to a decision about how to spell Mr Wallpenny and stick to it! (Not that it's a personal trigger or anything, but if you're going to opt for double barrelled - the second surname should be, for now and always CAPITALISED! Gerrrrrrrrrrpantpant) Ok, Rant over! XXX

I'd been hearing a lot of positive things about this series for a while and after some high fantasy reads, I thought I'd bring myself down to something a little more realistic (based in a real place at least). I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which Ben Aaronovitch wrote, if a little sexist and perverted, it was poetic and well thought out throughout. However, there was a lot of descriptions and background writing that drew me away from the story a little. Almost like he's trying to teach us about the history of London, which I understand he likely was and is possibly the book's semi-intention, but it just didn't flow with me.The main character was probably a 3/5, he wasn't funny, he wasn't witty, he just seemed to go through the motions and end up doing the right thing. Play, as previously mentioned, nearly all the women were described by the size of their breasts and it just took away from any real picture of what any female characters looked like.It may sound like I didn't like this book, I did! I thoroughly enjoyed the unique magic system, the clever references to London and how grounded the fantasy elements were. It would make a fantastic dark version of Harry Potter. I would still recommend this book to anyone who enjoys London or city-based books with a slight fantastical twist.