Rivers of London

Maybe all ghosts were like this, a pattern of memory trapped in the fabric of the city like files on a hard-drive – slowly getting worn away as each generation of Londoners laid down the pattern of their lives.

Normally, urban fantasy is not my cup of tea. I prefer my fantasy to be more… steeped in the miraculous and unmistakably foreign. But sometimes, you get something incredible when you combine something as lived-in as the city of London and magic. This book’s cover makes a crude comparison to Harry Potter, and really, it shouldn’t. Aaronovitch has accomplished something much more interesting here—not only magic, mythology, and superstitions, but their intersection with modern London society in all of its beautifully flawed ways. I am glad I happened to chance upon this book and gave the first page a chance—that’s all it took; I was hooked after a paragraph. If you’re on the fence, really, just give it a paragraph or two—and if you aren’t hooked, then the devil may eat my hat.Some may tell you that the narration is the key to this book. I largely agree. Peter Grant, our humble narrator, is a charming and slightly sarcastic guy who is a police constable trying to work his way up into some sort of respectable career. He’s somewhat scatterbrained, mixed race, geeky in every which way, and certainly ‘wizard’ is not the first thing that comes to poor Peter’s mind when he signs up for the job. Nor ‘ghost’. And yet, on a blustery January evening, he comes across one, and the course of his life takes a sharp turn… even with all the crazy, unbelievable things going on around him, Peter maintains a kind of neutral, almost comical, picture of things. His ‘non-reaction’ to magic, if you call it that, can be criticized a bit as unrealistic; but ultimately, his laid-back attitude makes him the fun narrator he is—with just the right amount of snark. This is a character I’m eager to revisit again in upcoming volumes, if only to be treated to his delightful banter and explanation of the weird events that keep happening to him for some reason.The plot of the novel takes a fairly standard mystery route—faces are falling off of people in gruesome ways, the city is turning brutish and violent at the drop of a hat, and, for some reason, the rivers of London (naturally, they are embodied spirits) have their own feud. Luckily, Peter is there to be a liaison for all of these seemingly unrelated tasks, aided by his mysterious mentor, Thomas Nightingale—a fascinating character in his own right, but largely still a mystery—and his friend and fellow constable, Lesley May. There are two main narratives—the causation of our falling-off-faces mystery, and the feud of the rivers—and the novel kind of takes a back-and-forth momentum with them. Without saying too much more, I wish that Aaronovitch had stitched the narrative together a bit more neatly in this regard. In spite of the feeling of random events being thrown at you, though, it really is quite a lot of fun—partly because of Peter’s narration, and partly because the writing is so delightful. Aaronovitch is clearly a Londoner, for whom the city has intricate complexity and meaning. I’ve only been to London a few times, so I was largely lost by the many references to specific places and directions. Even as annoying as having to reorient myself for every paragraph of location setting was, I quite enjoyed the portrait we get of London here—a messy but vibrant city, full of spirits and humans of all shapes and motives. I may not be a Londoner, but I am an urbanite, and much of that sentiment felt familiar and cozy to me in the way that only a city can. Aaronvitch’s descriptions don’t wax on and bore the reader, but they aren’t so short either so as to be devoid of meaning. While the directions and setting of specific-to-London scenes wore me a bit thin, I can imagine how much more richness they add to the novel for someone who is a Londoner. For that alone, I can commend the author in crafting an incredibly realistic setting—something that is hard to do even in a non-fantasy novel.Since this is urban fantasy, it won’t beat you to death with the worldbuilding and thematic development of a more traditional fantasy or contemporary novels, for better or worse. I do like quite a bit of worldbuilding, so I allowed myself to be a bit disappointed that we don’t get to see more discussion of the mysterious ways magic exists in this world. There are a few fun moments with Peter’s scientifically curious mind and his attempts to rationalize magic, which I appreciated. You’re not getting much of that magic for plot convenience that we see in other fantasy novels… ahem. The narrative also had enjoyable plot twists; though I didn’t see all of them as being that shocking, some did manage to surprise me. The reasons behind them made sense and weren’t overly heavy-handed, either. There are hints to some broad themes, but given the plot we aren’t really given much room to unpack them—but among them, racism, classism, and the right to vengeance feature especially. Still, I am dying to learn more about magic and the non-human creatures of this world—and I am eagerly looking forward to the next volume for that. Moreover, I can imagine there is an important reason for why Peter Grant is at the center of all of this, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that his background has been largely marginal in this first volume. Even though real life intervened and I didn’t quite finish this book as quickly as I would have liked, it was damned hard to put down, and most of all, it was a pretty fun time. Highly recommend to all who enjoy fantasy, vaguely police-based mysteries, supernatural themes or magic dropped into ordinary settings, and humorous-with-a-dash-of-snark narrators.Favorite quotes:※ ‘I left in a hurry before he could change his mind, but I want to make it clear that at no point did I break into a skip.’※ ‘“I’m just going to have a chat with this troll,” said Nightingale. “Sir,” I said, “I think we’re supposed to call them rough sleepers.”’※ ‘A London copper doesn’t like to intrude upon a traveller camp with anything less than a van full of bodies in riot gear – it’s considered disrespectful otherwise.’※ ‘“We don’t get to choose our family,” I said cheerfully. “Thank God we can choose our friends.”’※ ‘“I’m going to spring you,” he said. “Because we need to put an end to this fucking spiritual shit before some ACPO wallah panics and decides to bring in the Archbishop of Canterbury.”’※ ‘I’d like to say that I remembered the practice of exchanging hostages from school history classes or from stories of pre-colonial life in Sierra Leone, but the truth was that it came up while playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 13.’