Ratings180
Average rating4
Well, second book of this series down and I have got to say that I enjoyed it.
Hmm. Less satisfying than the first book. Also, the objectification of women is definitely not abating - possibly amplifying, in fact. The other problems from Rivers of London also seem recurrent – for example the two mostly separate plot lines.
Part of the problem might be that I simply don't care about music, so the long passages about jazz made my eyes glaze over. Also, I read it back-to-back with Rivers of London, which may have exacerbated my frustration about the repeated problematic portions. 2 1/2 stars and I'm going to take a break before continuing on.
Good plot, sloppy writing. All sorts of extra information, conversational asides, and insights into other characters that are unhelpful and distracting. The style is intended to feel casual and buddy-buddy, but it comes off like a first draft that badly needs an editor. An author should examine every sentence to see if it needs to be there, and if it's not necessary then CUT IT. This book could lose a good 50 pages of useless asides and other filler and be better for it.
Definitely better than vol 1
I really liked this story. Excellent with many of the main characters making appearances. The story leaves you wanting more. Love the “Tales from the Folly”.
I liked this one more than the first, and enjoyed the first quite a bit. Aaronovitch gets an extra star for how he handles Leslie's disfigurement. I listened to this rather than read and the narrator is good, and that always contributes.
The second book in the series replaces London's theatrical history with jazz music, as Grant investigates the magical murder of a musician. This brings in more of his family background, as well as expanding on the world of magical Britain, and we also see more of his boss's backstory.
Perhaps the two things that stand out most about this book are the details of the police work and the obvious love for the London setting. The former are unusually authentic for a book that's as much about dark wizards and supernatural beings as it is about a murder mystery (and honestly, whodunnit isn't that hard to work out - the real mystery is in the why). The latter comes across in the use of real locations, and the asides about the city's culture and history. One can almost feel the discomfort when Grant has to head out to Norfolk to follow up a lead.
Once again, though, there's the beauty of Aaronovitch's style, combining light irreverence and fast-paced action with some quite gory (and definitely not kid-friendly) detail. It successfully steers a middle line between say, the remorseless grimness of Paul Cornell's London Falling and the comedic tones of something like Gail Carriger's Parasolverse, and is much the stronger for it. It's another great outing in what's turning into a high-quality series... and the final line opens up a whole new set of possibilities for future books.
I realized this was a series I should have continued sooner. Went back, re,read the first and really enjoyed the style and wit, and the whole background of mixing Urban COntemporary with Fantasy Lore. Making a mental note to power though series I like rather thnan letting too much time between books.
This book made me cry at work for Peters and Leslie's relationship. I love it. I cannot cope with how accepting Peter is about Leslie's condition.
What to add to what has already been said? Police procedural, supernatural London, likable protagonists, and believably bad villains.
A very fine second book in a series that did nothing to curb my enthusiasm about the setting, characters, or writing. Ends a little bit unresolved, so I need to get my hands on number three asap.
Executive Summary: Another enjoyable entry in this series. Good but not great. Short and fun. 3.5 Stars.
Audio book: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is once again a perfect fit for this book. Not only does his normal voice seem to spot on for Peter Grant, but he does a great job with the other characters as well. He totally makes audio the only way to go for this series IMHO.
Full Review
The biggest praise I can offer this book, is the fact that I plan to continue on with the series. Pretty much every other Urban Fantasy series I've tried since discovering Dresden Files has been a disappointment.
Strangely since this is another sort of detective/magician cross over, I'm pretty surprised I do enjoy it. I don't think it's as good, but it's different enough to make for a good light read from time to time.
I know very little about London. But then I know very little about Chicago, so I don't think that matters too much. I like that this series has an English feel to it. And instead of a lot of the standard werewolves, vampires and ghosts, etc Mr. Aaronvitch puts his own spin on things.
You still have ghosts and vampires, but they feel unique and not carbon copies of the ones from the stories that have come before it.
The best parts of this book were how he further developed his protagonist by introducing us to his family as well as the ground work he seems to be laying for if not the series big baddie, a large challenge Peter will have to tackle in the near future.
I'm looking forward to continuing on and finding out what happens next. I don't think this is a series I'll marathon until I've caught up, but will definitely be coming back to at some point in the not too distant future.
Partea bună: Aaronovitch rămâne aproape la fel de amuzant, relația Grant-Nightingale-Toby-Molly la fel de simpatică, referințele la Londra sunt tot frecvente, dar nu atât de multe încât să mai fie deranjante. Apare un villain destul de interesant și un mister de grup care probabil vor fi lămurite în următoarele cărți, pe care, din aceste motive, le voi cumpăra.
Partea proastă: dacă prima carte era 50%policier și 50% mitic, aceasta este 80% policier, 0% mitic, 20% urban fantasy, iar acesta slab dezvoltat, doar pretext pt policier. Mie personal nu-mi plac nici policier, nici urban fantasy deloc, așa că nu a fost pe nișa mea. Dacă vă plac, go for it.
Partea și mai proastă: de la prima apariție a criminalului, m-am prins cine este. Și s-a confirmat, deci ca whodunit a eșuat la ce-i mai important. Situația e salvată, după cum spuneam, de faptul că în vănătoarea criminalului dă peste altcineva și mai rău.
Still a bit of fun pulp, but with more problems.
Problem 1: Authors have always liked to dot their work with references to things they like. Jim Butcher likes aikido, for example, so he made a secondary character an expert. Good, fine. Aaronovitch lacks self-restraint, however, and he's not so much dotted his work as upended the entire bucket on it. His preference is jazz, and its role is both more prominent and more ridiculous. It's a central part of the plot in ways it has no business being. Jazz featured a bit in the previous installment, and if a bit heavy-handed was fine as character background. He's gone far overboard this time, though. He also likes to show off – not just his knowledge of jazz standards, but of particular versions of them. It's downright masturbatory and it takes me out of the story.
Problem 2: Sex scenes. There are quite a lot, and they're simultaneously overly explicit and profoundly unsexy. If you must have them, you should probably avoid taking the worst of all worlds. Every time he started one, I'd think “oh god, he's trying this again.” It also appears to be important to Aaronovitch that his protagonist be a sexual Superman. It reeks of insecurity and, again, takes me out of the story.
Problem 3: Implausibility. At least once I was utterly unable to suspend my disbelief that characters would act as they did, and – you guessed it – boom, out of the story again.
It's fun enough if you're willing to overlook all these issues, but a literary award winner this is not. I've not decided whether to continue with the series.
I've found the best Urban Fantasy novels are also great detective novels, except instead of ballistics, DNA testing, and the other tools of the science detectives trade that Sherlock Holmes & the like bust out, there's magic. The Peter Grant novels succeed at this fantastically. Aaronovitch creates excellent characters and riveting mysteries that really pull you in.
London: one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, a reputation it has held since it rose in status from a backwater town on the Roman frontier to the capital of one of the greatest countries in Europe. An economic, historical, and cultural center, it has been at the heart of or been involved in some of the greatest events of Western history.
In other words, it is a city with character: an indefinable something that shapes the feel of a city and of the people who are born and live in it. It also means that, as the setting for writers to use in their stories, it is one that provides endless possibilities for variation, to the point that London itself becomes a character in its own right. In the hands of a writer like Charles Dickens, for instance, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London becomes not just a mere backdrop for Miss Havisham or Sherlock Holmes: it takes on a life of its own, and is as vitally important to the work as the characters and the plot.
In Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant books, this is most certainly the case. Rivers of London, the first book in the series, introduced Aaronovitch's London of magic, wizards, genii locorum and so much more, as seen through the eyes of Peter Grant, a cop and apprentice wizard who must ensure that the Queen's Peace is maintained not only in the mundane world, but also - or most especially - in the supernatural world as well. Apprenticed to Thomas Nightingale, Grant becomes the first apprentice wizard since the end of World War II. Rivers of London details how Grant became Nightingale's apprentice, and how he solves two very big, and very important cases: one is a turf war between the genii locorum of London's rivers (hence the title); and the other the exorcism of Mr. Punch, the embodiment of the spirit of mayhem and chaos particular to London. However, not everyone emerged unscathed: Nightingale was nearly killed, and Lesley May, Grant's partner, nearly had her face destroyed by Mr. Punch.
Moon Over Soho picks up where Rivers of London left off. It has been a few months since the end of events in the first book, and everything seems to be going relatively smoothly so far. For instance, Lesley and Nightingale seem to both be recovering fairly well from their injuries (devastating though Lesley's may have been), and the truce between the rivers of London still holds. However, a new pair of cases has emerged that Grant needs to solve: one is a rash of mysterious deaths of jazz musicians, and the other concerns a young woman who has been killing men by cutting their penises off - a character that made an appearance towards the end of the previous novel, but whose identity will finally be resolved in Moon Over Soho.
This novel has certain interesting aspects to it that were not seen in the previous novel. First would definitely have to be Grant's family. It is mentioned in Rivers of London that Grant's father is a jazz musician, but it is only in Moon Over Soho that the reader truly gets to see him and Grant's mother. As it turns out, Grant's father is more than just an average musician: he is known in the jazz circles of Soho as “Lord Grant,” a nickname he gained while still a young man, and the nickname by which he is still known - and respected. It turns out that Lord Grant's jazz career was cut short primarily because of mouth or lip cancer, which has left him unable to play his favorite instrument, the trumpet. However, he is attempting to revive his flagging career by shifting to another instrument, the keyboard. Lord Grant also provides one of the crucial clues that helps Grant solve the mystery regarding the death of several jazz musicians.
And speaking of jazz, I rather enjoyed how important it is in this novel. Many jazz aficionados would approve of the idea that jazz is magical, and it is quite obvious that Aaronovitch tries to make that as true as possible in Moon Over Soho without going overboard - mostly by making Grant have neutral feelings about the genre. He might be the son of a jazz legend, but Grant does not have very strong feelings about it as a whole. He likes it, but is not totally devoted to it. I would have appreciated a playlist of sorts, actually, of the songs that appear in the story, as well as a few more that are in the spirit of the music in the novel. Such a playlist is not necessary to the enjoyment of the novel, of course, but it would have been a nice touch for readers who want to explore the genre.
Another interesting idea put forward in the novel is the idea that it is the force of will that creates magic. If one wishes for something hard enough, for instance, or simply thinks about something hard enough, whatever it is one wishes for or thinks about comes true or comes into being. It is this strength of willpower over the universe that creates the jazz vampires: the entities that are killing the jazz musicians in Soho. They (for there are three of them) are survivors of the bombing of a jazz club during the Blitz, and from that time onwards have been feeding on the energies of jazz musicians, something which keeps them young and beautiful into the twenty-first century. Through the force of their will, they have created themselves into supernatural creatures, and moreover, do not seem to be aware of it - either that, or are capable of ignoring it most of the time. Grant isn't quite sure which it is. The notion is an intriguing one, and one which will hopefully be explored in later novels.
Moon Over Soho also introduces “the greater enemy”: a coterie of evil wizards, one of whose members is known as the Faceless Man. He is in charge of the Pale Lady, the mysterious young woman whose victims have been left behind without their penises - because, as it turns out, the Pale Lady has what is known as vagina dentata, and she removes her victims' penises by literally biting them off. The introduction of evil wizards and a “greater enemy” at this point in the series is certainly necessary, because Grant and Nightingale will need a more definite opponent in the coming books, but I cannot help but think it is all a bit too contrived at this stage. It is as if the author is aware that there will be more books forthcoming, and the introduction of the Faceless Man and the mystery of who is behind him seems like a deliberate setup instead of a natural outgrowth of the progress of the story.
I cannot help but wonder: is London experiencing some kind of dearth of supernatural mayhem ever since Mr. Punch was eliminated that the introduction of the evil wizards is necessary? Can there not be some other kind of evil coming Grant and Nightingale's way, like maybe some mysterious goings-on at Westminster Abbey, for instance? Or what about the Tower? And Oxford seems like a prime setting for trouble of the supernatural kind.
I am also a bit leery about what happens to Lesley at the end of the novel. The novel concludes with Grant paying Lesley a visit, and finding out that she can work magic. He is not quite certain what could have given her that talent, though he speculates it is a result of her possession by Mr. Punch. I found the introduction of that element towards the end a bit contrived as well. Was it truly necessary for Lesley to have magic? Could she not have been another mundane working in the magical world, like Dr. Walid, for instance? I think it would have been better if Lesley's discovery of her talent came about slowly, while working alongside Grant and Nightingale.
Moon Over Soho is, simply put, not as jaw-dropping as Rivers of London, for reasons I have mentioned above. But despite being weaker than the first novel, it is still a great read. Grant's voice is still fun, and the narration still has that wry sense of humor that I find endlessly funny and entertaining. Recurring characters are still as interesting as they were in Rivers of London (Nightingale is more human in this one) and new characters are just as intriguing (look out for the “Muslim ninja”). And London, as Aaronovitch depicts it, is still as wonderfully insane as it was in the first book.
For a sequel, it's not bad at all.
This novel includes various significant developments in the overall plot of the series: Lesley begins her slow recovery from the events of the previous book, Peter's father begins to recover his life and his career, the Pale Lady comes and goes, and there are some first appearances: the Faceless Man, Harold Postmartin, Abigail Kamara, Sahra Guleed. We visit Nightingale's old school, briefly.
The tragic story of Simone seems of no significance to the series as a whole, but it's the central feature of this particular novel. I suppose it's a good tragic story, but I'm not a fan of tragedy in general, so this is not one of my favourite books in the series.
On reading the book for the fourth time, I got through it more happily by skipping most of the bits about Simone and concentrating on all the other things going on.