What I Read: Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

30th January 2014

In the last few weeks I have read the majority of the series that starts with Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot in the US). If you had asked me during the first book if I would now be on the fourth (and final at the moment) one of the series I would have said no siree. I didn’t love the first book but I did like it. I found it a little too gruesome for me with faces falling off all over the place, but I did enjoy reading it and liked the characters, and that it is quite different from what I normally read (lovey dovey girly books).

I have owned Rivers of London on my kindle app for quite a while now, and tried reading it once before but couldn’t get into it easily. After finishing it I decided I wanted to find out what happened next to the characters and wanted more magic in my life. I have now read:

Rivers of London
Moon Over Soho
Whispers Under Ground

And I’m about to begin Broken Homes. But I’m trying to make myself wait a little bit before starting this one so I don’t stay up all night reading for at least a little while.

I much preferred the second and third books to the first, which never happens, and apart from the gross-ness of the first I think that it may be because you know the characters a bit better by the sequels and perhaps care more about what happens to them. I do think it’s mostly because I just preferred the plotlines in the second and third books though.

The series is centered around a young police officer called Peter Grant who, after an encounter with a ghost finds out that he can do magic and is recruited into a secret branch of the Metropolitan Police that deals with magic and the supernatural.

One thing that drives me absolutely crazy about these books is how terribly edited they are. They get worse as they go along, and there are literally mistakes every few pages in some of them; words missed out, extra words and more. I can’t take it. How can a published series of books be so poorly edited that it looks like they haven’t been proof-read at all. I kind of want to offer up my proof-reading services to the editors because they certainly need to get some better one’s. I care about good spelling and grammar and I could take the odd tiny mistake, but tons and tons in a published book is just ridiculous! Ok I’m done.

The books are described as ‘urban fantasy’, but honestly, that would have put me off if I’d known that first and hadn’t heard some good reviews. Even though I loved The Harry Potter books (which I don’t think these books are like at all by the way) and all the magic involved I generally like my books to be realistic and relatable; and my science mind sometimes struggles with things that aren’t real. Not that I’m saying ghosts aren’t real. Or river goddesses. But I’ve still really got into these books and am looking forward to starting the next one. I think it might be because they are based in a real place (London), and it is the real world we live, but with magical creatures in the mix.

These books aren’t perfect but I’ve definitely enjoyed them and will keep on reading them if more are published. Hopefully I’ll be proof-reading them at the same time so no-one else has to suffer.

Have you read any of the Rivers of London series? Do you think you will? Let me know about any books you’ve read recently and loved in the comments – I’d love to hear.

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