Rivers of London

Super compulsive reading: all of the best parts of a police procedural with some nicely developed magical systems, all set in one of my favorite cities in the world.

The crime was creepy, but evocative. However, I felt like Punch and Judy manifesting in horrific ways has been done before, for instance by both Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman.

I liked Peter Grant and his character development. I liked that he was kind of spacey and distractable and well-paired with the detail-oriented Leslie May

I had two big complaints: one was the objectification of the female characters (about which I'd been warned, and also promised that it improves throughout the series, which hopefully is true.) The other is the pacing: climaxes of one scene would jump cut to hours of studying Latin for no clear reason. This is at its worst at the very end, where I really couldn't quite figure out what actually happened because the action was stuffed with exposition and another case. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Rook: mystery/urban fantasy mashup with world building that occasionally butts its way into action.

Overall, it's chock-full of my favorite things: deeply urban (London, no less), interesting mystery and well-designed speculative fiction. Perfect camping reading, and I'm totally tempted to binge read the rest of the series