cover photo by shadesofword.com

An urban fantasy story set in contemporary London UK seems right up my alley (Sorry, I couldn’t find a river-based expression). I love London, having visited the city a few times on vacation, and I’ve watched many British TV shows set there. I have also enjoyed urban fantasy: stories set against a modern backdrop where specially-empowered agents try to protect the ordinary cityfolk from supernatural beings secretly living (and committing crimes) among us. I watched the TV series Supernatural for many years, and have enjoyed a couple volumes of the popular Dresden Files novel series. I had expected this book, aka Midnight Riot, to be a new favourite, or at least that I was starting a new favourite series with the Rivers of London books by Ben Aaronovitch. While the verdict may still be out on the latter, I was a bit mixed on Midnight Riot.

I was looking forward to modern London used well as a setting, and this book has definitely got that. The story centring around a gruesome, violent crime committed specifically in the area of Covent Garden, many additional streets, London buildings and neighbourhoods are also named. For someone familiar with the city’s geography, those locations would likely be very immersive and provide a lot of context. For me, I’d say I was familiar with 15-20% of the names, but still, I enjoyed how important the real-world setting was for this story. Also, a core concept of this book (and presumably the whole series) is that the various rivers in London are also named, since they are “alive” as characters in the story. It’s similar to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, where abstract concepts are embodied as human-like avatars, but in this story, various rivers such as Thames, Tyburn, etc. are manifested as avatars or gods and interact with the main characters. That was probably my favourite aspect to this story, and what might make me continue the series. I am a huge sucker for the “gods among us” trope.

In addition to places, the narration is all provided by our main character, Peter Grant, a junior detective, who expectedly speaks and thinks in his local London vernacular. That was great for me. Having watched more than a few British TV series, I did not feel out-of-water (There’s your river-based expression!) and it helped the story feel fresh and distinct from The Dresden Files (which has a very similar vibe from an American perspective). At first I was worried that there’d be too much slang that I wouldn’t understand, but ultimately I was good. I did also find the slightly humourous tone in Midnight Riot to be more my speed than the weary woe-is-me sarcasm of The Dresden Files.

As for the story itself, it was too conventional, in my opinion. Basically Grant gets involved with a murder case that happened in Covent Garden as it supernaturally grows out of control. Because of the supernatural elements involved, he gets assigned to DCI Thomas Nightingale as his boss. Nightingale is a magic user/wizard of some kind and has worked on supernatural crimes for many many years. Since Grant shows some aptitude for magic himself, Nightingale starts to train him. Interestingly, in The Dresden Files, the main character Harry Dresden is himself a wizard, but in this book the wizard is a secondary character (at least for now until Grant presumably becomes full-fledged himself). Unfortunately that also made the magical elements of the story a bit less prominent. There was a significant portion of the story where Nightingale wasn’t around, and Grant is only doing beginner stuff. I have some faith in the series because there are a few elements introduced that could potentially open up to a much more fantastical world, including the river goddesses as well as the magical residence assigned to Grant as a homebase, known as The Folly. Though all this magical stuff was set up, most of the focus was still on the murders (which were far from mundane, involving ghosts and possession and stuff like that), and yet I kept wanting that to be done with so we could get back.

In the end, I hope to continue the series some day, but when I still have more books to read, including plenty more of The Dresden Files, we’ll need to see when I return to the Rivers of London.

3 stars

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