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Ben Aaronovitch: Rivers of London (Paperback, Gollancz) 4 stars

Review of 'Rivers of London' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

This book started with 5 stars, changed to 1 star and ended with a solid 3 stars.
When I first started reading it I was excited about this new form of magic, the magical beings, goddesses, the good humour and the sarcastic main character. However, after 50 pages it starts getting boring. The main plot seems forgotten for the next few chapters, we just follow Peter Grant on some magical adventures that have hardly any relevance to the story. The humour, first refreshing, started to annoy me, the main character seems to be a 15 year old boy only interested in cars and boobs. He can't even be around a woman without constantly thinking about her boobs. I stopped reading at several of those scenes cause I was that annoyed. When the actual plot continues, there are constant setbacks, which is important of course, no one should succeed on the first try, but after the third "I knew it is a stupid plan, but it is the only chance we have", followed by everything going completely wrong and the story going back to where it started, I seriously considered not finishing this book. I'm glad I continued though because the ending was quite interesting and the reason it still got 3 stars.
All in all, it's a fun light read. People who are looking for humour and don't mind the story getting a bit off track - read it. People who are looking for character depth and a captivating story - maybe not so much.