"Broken Homes", Ben Aaronovitch

Here's another new "Rivers of London" novel (following "Moon Over Soho" and "Whispers Underground"), and yet again it comes up trumps. One of the things I love about this series is that the protagonist is only an apprentice magician/junior police officer, he hasn't developed mystical supreme powers as prophesied so that only he can save the world, and quite often he needs to resort to more powerful backup: he is only a small cog. I'm not sure if it's my somewhat vague memory of the previous books, but Peter Grant's immediate superior, Nightingale (a wonderful creation as a pre-war gentleman-dilettante practitioner) seems to be taking on an increasingly large role, and there are intriguing hints in this book that he may be 'the Nightingale' rather than this simply being his surname...

"Broken Homes" is a skilful combination of new-planet-of-the-week setting to provide a fresh field of interest (this time round, we explore the intersection between modernist architecture and industrial magic) and continuing story arc, with a completely unexpected and yet believable twist to the latter. ( Read more... )

The flowers that might bloom in the spring, take 2

So much for shoots should appear in approximately eight weeks - the bulbs are still there, apparently rooted and still unrotted, but showing no signs whatsoever of greenery, let alone flowers, after four months...