Book: Rivers of London
Nov. 19th, 2012 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Ben Aaronovitch
Details: (c) Ben Aaronovitch 2011; Pub 2011 Gollancz; ISBN 978-0-575-09758-2
Verdict: Rivers of London is rather fun and original trad urban fantasy.
Reasons for reading it: It's been getting a lot of good buzz recently. I was particularly attracted by all the comments tomarina's request about whether it's faily. And I generally love books about the hidden magical city existing in parallel with the real one.
How it came into my hands: The library was promoting it on its shelf of particularly hot books.
Rivers of London is proper urban fantasy, in the mode of Charles de Lint and Emma Bull, not that annoying paranormal romance stuff which is marketed as UF these days. It's also very much set in a recognizable, deeply located London. I love that the London in the book is complex and diverse and absolutely contemporary; the book was published within a few months of last year's riots and this event forms a central theme. This London is not just the City or just Westminster or just a romanticized version of the East End.
Peter Grant is a very likeable narrator. He's a very junior policeman who's main aim in life is to avoid trouble, with a degree of curiosity and desire for justice to make him suitable for the leading role in a magical detective story, but without being a Gary Stu character who is implausibly brilliant at deduction (or magic, for that matter) and ridiculously idealistic. He also has a habit of explaining things to the audience, even quite basic facts about London which aren't part of the AU worldbuilding, but just facts, such as the way the Northern Line branches at Camden, or information about class markers. This could be annoying but it never comes across as heavy-handed and pedantic, and in fact sets the scene for his providing information about the magical background without being too infodump-ish. I found it very easy to suspend disbelief because the way that magic works is discussed in exactly the same way as random London trivia or information about how the modern Metropolitan Police force works. And PC Grant doesn't waste his time being excessively skeptical; he starts out not believing in magic, but when he sees and experiences it directly, he accepts the evidence of his senses and just gets on with the story.
RoL is a fairly light read, but very successful at conveying a range of emotional tones. The magical killer is suitably creepy and macabre for a detective story, and readers' sympathy is engaged for the characters so that I cared when they got into trouble. At the same time the narrative doesn't take itself too seriously; there's always a leavening of snark, both self-mockery and poking fun at contemporary society (and occasionally at the Harry Potter media phenomenon) to prevent things from getting melodramatic. I found it highly enjoyable throughout, and although the plot can sometimes get slightly bitty it never dragged.
Although the title is Rivers of London, the subplot about the river spirits is never quite properly developed. There are some really clever ideas there, and I loved the portrayal of a Traveller family as the genii locorum of the upstream Thames and their conflict with the Afro-Caribbean genii locorum of the tidal Thames. But this part of the story is introduced and then gets kind of buried behind the main detective story arc, and then shows up again right at the end and seems to be resolved in a rather hasty and half-baked way.
The other thing that's interesting about RoL is the way it deals with race. The setting is one where ethnicity exists, and it's not a bland, tokenist catalogue of characters with different skin tones, people's backgrounds and different experiences of the world actually matter. PC Grant himself is described as being biracial and this has real effects on his experiences of the world (both magical and mundane) and interactions with others. However RoL is very determinedly not a book about the Race Issue. Racism exists in this setting, but it's a very gentle, understated sort of racism; there's a weird scene where the protag gets into an argument with an older policeman who racially abuses him, except that he does so in the form of a rambling monologue about how back in the day someone like Grant wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the police force, and he wouldn't have been protected because in those days most policemen didn't even know how to spell "racial discrimination". It's almost hard to believe that a mean, belligerent older police officer lamenting the rise of political correctness would be so, well, dainty and euphemistic in his aggression towards his biracial junior.
I don't necessarily think the book would be improved by being more gritty, it's just an approach I haven't really seen before, most books either make a big deal of racism or ignore it. Along similar lines it's addressing the issue of police violence and corruption, but only very obliquely, it's easy to read as just a fun romp which also happens to make some points about the relationships between the general public and the police in the past couple of years. There's even a throwaway line about the shooting of de Menezes, but it's never really highlighted, it's just a cue to a reader who happens to be au fait with the UK political scene.
I am looking forward to seeing where the sequels of this go!
Details: (c) Ben Aaronovitch 2011; Pub 2011 Gollancz; ISBN 978-0-575-09758-2
Verdict: Rivers of London is rather fun and original trad urban fantasy.
Reasons for reading it: It's been getting a lot of good buzz recently. I was particularly attracted by all the comments to
marina's request about whether it's faily. And I generally love books about the hidden magical city existing in parallel with the real one. How it came into my hands: The library was promoting it on its shelf of particularly hot books.
Rivers of London is proper urban fantasy, in the mode of Charles de Lint and Emma Bull, not that annoying paranormal romance stuff which is marketed as UF these days. It's also very much set in a recognizable, deeply located London. I love that the London in the book is complex and diverse and absolutely contemporary; the book was published within a few months of last year's riots and this event forms a central theme. This London is not just the City or just Westminster or just a romanticized version of the East End.
Peter Grant is a very likeable narrator. He's a very junior policeman who's main aim in life is to avoid trouble, with a degree of curiosity and desire for justice to make him suitable for the leading role in a magical detective story, but without being a Gary Stu character who is implausibly brilliant at deduction (or magic, for that matter) and ridiculously idealistic. He also has a habit of explaining things to the audience, even quite basic facts about London which aren't part of the AU worldbuilding, but just facts, such as the way the Northern Line branches at Camden, or information about class markers. This could be annoying but it never comes across as heavy-handed and pedantic, and in fact sets the scene for his providing information about the magical background without being too infodump-ish. I found it very easy to suspend disbelief because the way that magic works is discussed in exactly the same way as random London trivia or information about how the modern Metropolitan Police force works. And PC Grant doesn't waste his time being excessively skeptical; he starts out not believing in magic, but when he sees and experiences it directly, he accepts the evidence of his senses and just gets on with the story.
RoL is a fairly light read, but very successful at conveying a range of emotional tones. The magical killer is suitably creepy and macabre for a detective story, and readers' sympathy is engaged for the characters so that I cared when they got into trouble. At the same time the narrative doesn't take itself too seriously; there's always a leavening of snark, both self-mockery and poking fun at contemporary society (and occasionally at the Harry Potter media phenomenon) to prevent things from getting melodramatic. I found it highly enjoyable throughout, and although the plot can sometimes get slightly bitty it never dragged.
Although the title is Rivers of London, the subplot about the river spirits is never quite properly developed. There are some really clever ideas there, and I loved the portrayal of a Traveller family as the genii locorum of the upstream Thames and their conflict with the Afro-Caribbean genii locorum of the tidal Thames. But this part of the story is introduced and then gets kind of buried behind the main detective story arc, and then shows up again right at the end and seems to be resolved in a rather hasty and half-baked way.
The other thing that's interesting about RoL is the way it deals with race. The setting is one where ethnicity exists, and it's not a bland, tokenist catalogue of characters with different skin tones, people's backgrounds and different experiences of the world actually matter. PC Grant himself is described as being biracial and this has real effects on his experiences of the world (both magical and mundane) and interactions with others. However RoL is very determinedly not a book about the Race Issue. Racism exists in this setting, but it's a very gentle, understated sort of racism; there's a weird scene where the protag gets into an argument with an older policeman who racially abuses him, except that he does so in the form of a rambling monologue about how back in the day someone like Grant wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the police force, and he wouldn't have been protected because in those days most policemen didn't even know how to spell "racial discrimination". It's almost hard to believe that a mean, belligerent older police officer lamenting the rise of political correctness would be so, well, dainty and euphemistic in his aggression towards his biracial junior.
I don't necessarily think the book would be improved by being more gritty, it's just an approach I haven't really seen before, most books either make a big deal of racism or ignore it. Along similar lines it's addressing the issue of police violence and corruption, but only very obliquely, it's easy to read as just a fun romp which also happens to make some points about the relationships between the general public and the police in the past couple of years. There's even a throwaway line about the shooting of de Menezes, but it's never really highlighted, it's just a cue to a reader who happens to be au fait with the UK political scene.
I am looking forward to seeing where the sequels of this go!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 06:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 04:30 pm (UTC)xxx.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-22 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-22 10:04 am (UTC)Yay, yes, definitely want to read nanotech book. Although I actually really want to read the book with all of the politics between different uplifted species, especially elephants :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 04:54 pm (UTC)wrt whether it's faily, the US editions of the first two had a generic thrillery shadow-silhouette male figure on the front which some people took as deliberate attempt to conceal the protagonist being non-white; third one has the same cover as the British edition, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 05:19 pm (UTC)Racefail stuff: I think people who hadn't read the book, but were looking at publicity for it or reading reviews had got the impression that it was one of those dreadful urban fantasy things where the relationship between humans and vampires is an allegory for race relations. Which, you know, it's not impossible that that could be done well, but it's a lot more likely to be cringe-makingly awful. It may well be that I like it because it has a British understanding of race (and class, for that matter) rather than an Americanized one.
I've just looked up the American covers and they really are terribly generic-thrillery. I can certainly see some merit in having one of these actors posing on the cover, fully lit; Noel Clarke is probably the closest fit for how I imagined Grant from the descriptions. But I admit I rather like the whimsical map on the UK paperback, and although I hesitate to say this, I think there's also an advantage to the book being placed on the best-sellers shelf rather than the ethnic special interest shelf.