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Jul. 1st, 2013 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo I read Midnight Riot, the first book in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, and I said to myself, "well, sure, that was reasonably enjoyable. Do I want to read the next one? . . . yeah, I guess I do."
And then I read the next one, Moon Over Soho, and I said to myself, "do I want to read the one after that? . . . apparently I want to read the one after that immediately. How about that?"
And then I read the one after that, Whispers Underground, and I said to myself, "do I want to read the one after that? . . . what do you mean, it's not out until the end of July? But I want it now!"
It's not actually that the books get progressively better as books in and of themselves, for the record -- the plot of the second one is one of those mysteries where everyone knows what's going on half a book before the protagonist does, and I cannot actually even remember the main plot of the third one and I read it two weeks ago. But somehow I became really fond of the characters when I wasn't looking!
The protagonist, for the record, is PC Peter Grant, a young police officer with a failed jazz musician father and an extended West African immigrant family, who sort of accidentally ends up apprenticed to the one magician affiliated with the London police department. The magic squad is sort of undercover, but not exactly secret. Over the course of the series, as magical crimes start to increase number, most of the other police officers that they work with become aware to a greater or lesser extent that Peter and his boss are involved in some sort of freaky supernatural weirdness. They all still have to do paperwork and follow procedure, and no one has to angst about being forever alone, and people with no interest or investment in magic are just as useful and competent as magic-users, and normal people never have to get their memories erased because they just can't cope! THIS IS VERY EXCITING TO ME. And Peter's pool of connections and contacts is continually expanding, and I really like that too.
The other thing I like best about the series is HOW MUCH I LOVE LESLIE. So, okay, if you don't know the books and clicked under this cut because you don't care about spoilers: Leslie is another police officer who Peter went through training with. She is much better at actual police work than Peter is, and Peter has a huge crush on her. At the end of the first book, she gets on the wrong side of a magical crime, and basically her face falls off.
In most series, this would be the end of Leslie, or at the very least the breaking of Leslie, while Peter carries on nobly filled with Leslie-related manpain -- but Leslie isn't broken, and she gets a really amazingly done recovery arc that carries through the books. The seriousness of what she's going through is never downplayed; she's permanently and very severely disfigured, and her life is never going to be the same. All the same, she picks herself back up, and remains an extremely talented police officer, and starts learning magic alongside Peter, and I had not realized how much I wanted a really well-done recovery arc for a female character like this until I got it.
And then I read the next one, Moon Over Soho, and I said to myself, "do I want to read the one after that? . . . apparently I want to read the one after that immediately. How about that?"
And then I read the one after that, Whispers Underground, and I said to myself, "do I want to read the one after that? . . . what do you mean, it's not out until the end of July? But I want it now!"
It's not actually that the books get progressively better as books in and of themselves, for the record -- the plot of the second one is one of those mysteries where everyone knows what's going on half a book before the protagonist does, and I cannot actually even remember the main plot of the third one and I read it two weeks ago. But somehow I became really fond of the characters when I wasn't looking!
The protagonist, for the record, is PC Peter Grant, a young police officer with a failed jazz musician father and an extended West African immigrant family, who sort of accidentally ends up apprenticed to the one magician affiliated with the London police department. The magic squad is sort of undercover, but not exactly secret. Over the course of the series, as magical crimes start to increase number, most of the other police officers that they work with become aware to a greater or lesser extent that Peter and his boss are involved in some sort of freaky supernatural weirdness. They all still have to do paperwork and follow procedure, and no one has to angst about being forever alone, and people with no interest or investment in magic are just as useful and competent as magic-users, and normal people never have to get their memories erased because they just can't cope! THIS IS VERY EXCITING TO ME. And Peter's pool of connections and contacts is continually expanding, and I really like that too.
The other thing I like best about the series is HOW MUCH I LOVE LESLIE. So, okay, if you don't know the books and clicked under this cut because you don't care about spoilers: Leslie is another police officer who Peter went through training with. She is much better at actual police work than Peter is, and Peter has a huge crush on her. At the end of the first book, she gets on the wrong side of a magical crime, and basically her face falls off.
In most series, this would be the end of Leslie, or at the very least the breaking of Leslie, while Peter carries on nobly filled with Leslie-related manpain -- but Leslie isn't broken, and she gets a really amazingly done recovery arc that carries through the books. The seriousness of what she's going through is never downplayed; she's permanently and very severely disfigured, and her life is never going to be the same. All the same, she picks herself back up, and remains an extremely talented police officer, and starts learning magic alongside Peter, and I had not realized how much I wanted a really well-done recovery arc for a female character like this until I got it.
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Date: 2013-07-01 09:46 pm (UTC)Apparently the books have been optioned for a BBC series? And I have no fear that Peter will be whitewashed, but I'm really concerned they'll fudge the business with Leslie's face, if only because it's awkward when your lead actress is entirely masked.
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Date: 2013-07-01 09:51 pm (UTC)I saw you tweet about that but I didn't know if it was a hypothetical or real! That is exciting but I TOO am really nervous about Leslie's face. :-/ Like, both mask and prosthetic -- and they'll need good prosthetics -- will be a serious (and understandable) challenge for an actress.
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Date: 2013-07-01 10:00 pm (UTC)(I didn't figure out what was happening in Moon Over Soho until the end. I just thought what a randy young thing Peter is, how odd, he didn't seem so uhh highly-sexed in the first book...)
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Date: 2013-07-01 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-01 10:05 pm (UTC)(Hah! I mean, it's true, there was QUITE A LOT of sex in that book. I was actually expecting more awareness/malevolence than there was, though, so the end did still surprise me!)
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Date: 2013-07-02 05:18 pm (UTC)Actually, his very first novel, Remembrance of the Daleks, got re-released this year as part of the run-up to the 50th Anniversary celebration. It's a bit clunkier than I thought it was when it and I were both twenty years younger, but it's still one of my particular favourites of his novels. And on the other hand, one thing I appreciate now that went straight past me as a kid is that it shows Aaronovitch was already committed to depicting characters from other cultures as individuals who are shaped but not wholly defined by their backgrounds. Even the Daleks.
The other one of his Doctor Who novels that's a particular favourite of mine is The Also People (which, alas, has not been reprinted). In which the Doctor takes his companions on holiday in a highly-advanced alien society that has all the sensawunda of an Iain M. Banks novel (there's a cryptic acknowledgement of the inspiration in the foreword), but unlike any Iain M. Banks novel I ever read is populated with people I actually enjoyed spending time with. And of course somebody gets murdered, because you couldn't just have the Doctor & Co. on holiday for 280 pages, but in some ways that's really not the point.
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Date: 2013-07-02 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-07-02 10:27 am (UTC)The other reason is also flat out Peter is the worst superhero ever. Learning to do magic? Tell your best friend! Tell your mom! Tell your neighbour's kid. Secret identities and double lives are things that happen to other people. (It's also awesome that Peter HAS people to tell? And so does everyone in the cast? They actually get to have families! WOW HOW WEIRD IS THAT)
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Date: 2013-07-02 01:33 pm (UTC)(And yesssss I love that everyone has families and a context and goes home for the holidays.)
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Date: 2013-07-02 02:39 pm (UTC)(There is a really awesome Yuletide story this past year, 10K, Nightingale POV, that runs with this idea. I cannot link because work, but: so good.)
I love these books so much and am so sad that the US release of the fourth is delayed and I will have to resort to means of varying degrees of shadyness to get it early. And it's such a _relief_ to read a book with a biracial protagonist where the fact of his non-white ancestry *is actually shown to matter*, plus all the other people (I have a few twinges about the humorless lesbian higher-up whose name I can't remember how to spell, but she's so clearly respected and competent that I think I'm okay with her).
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Date: 2013-07-02 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-02 03:16 pm (UTC)Sorry, it's the ebook thing that makes me have to resort to Means.
I gather from the author's blog that he finished it a very short time ago and so the US publisher might have needed the time for the ordinary mechanisms of production; the books are bestsellers in the UK but I don't get the impression that they're so popular in the US that they warrant the all-hands-on-deck production that Robert Jordan got back in the day.
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Date: 2013-07-02 10:23 pm (UTC)(Oooh, I was wondering if there was any good fic -- thanks for the rec!)
Oh no, is it delayed? D: That sucks! I was hoping to be able to get it out of the library like I did the last few. And yeah, I love how much of a role Peter's family and his heritage really play in the story -- and all the background cast, too. Kumar! Somali ninja girl! (Yeah, I have similar feelings about Stephanopoulos . . . but I do also really love her secret sparkly delight in the existence of magic.)
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Date: 2013-07-03 12:56 am (UTC)Sorry, imprecise, it's later than the UK edition, but it never had an earlier US release date.
Fic now that I'm at home:
Though I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea (10732 words) by lightgetsin
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Thomas Nightingale, Peter Grant, Miriam Stephanopoulos, Lesley May
Additional Tags: Mystery, Case Fic, Queer Characters, Characters of color, Character Study, Families of Choice
Summary:
“The world has changed. Yes. I receive undeniable proof of that every day when that electronic coffee pot of yours starts up on its own.”
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Date: 2013-07-03 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-04 09:18 pm (UTC)I've always put that down to being at least partly Stephanopolus' strategy for surviving and indeed thriving in the Met, which is not exactly notorious for being an enlightened institution....
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Date: 2013-07-04 10:34 pm (UTC)Very possible! I love her, regardless, and I'm fairly sure the narrative wants me to, but...
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Date: 2013-07-05 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-03 03:40 am (UTC)On the other hand Peter had NO EXCUSE FOR ABIGAIL, which is what makes her especially hilarious. XD And meanwhile Nightingale is just left standing there with a resigned expression as Peter flails around distributing information to all and sundry and doubles the size of his department/number of students in less than a year, and only draws the line at Peter teaching other people his SLOPPY MAGIC, THE HORROR.
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