"Broken Homes", Ben Aaronovitch
3 February 2016 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeHere'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. In fact, I suspect my reading of the book would have been enhanced by having reread the others in the series more recently, since I only have vague memories of details in the earlier books and, for instance, have now completely forgotten at what stage and how (presumably in the first book?) Peter's colleague Lesley lost her face :-( I do sort of remember Mother Thames and her sassy daughter-rivers, the nightclub hybrids, the demon trap and the underground (or London Underground) civilization (something to do with a fox, as well), but barely in enough detail to pick up that there were references.
I have to say that I was rather hoping the book wouldn't go down the wellworn lines of a romance between Peter and his colleague, and for much of the story their relationship does indeed seem to be refreshingly platonic; there are hints that this may change in the future, though, which I'm sure many of the readers are dying to see but I feel would be rather a pity...
We learn a bit more about the wider history of magic in Europe in the course of this book, with references to German magic under Weimar and Soviet-era war-witches, both of which fit into the pattern of our 'known' past with the sort of satisfying click created by the best alternate history creations :-) So far as I can tell the Russian and German extracts are convincingly accurate, as well -- which is refreshing, after seeing too many recent fanfics with phrases clearly provided via Google Translate!
Modernist architecture as a means of 20th-century magical manipulation really explains a lot, too :-p
As ever, the book manages to come across as rooted simultaneously in a practical knowledge of modern policing, an intimate knowledge of London (it's always odd when scenes make reference to locations you've actually visited personally, like the café in front of the National Film Theatre!) and a well-thought-out theory of magic. I love stories with this degree of world-building, and Ben Aaronovitch manages to keep it up for sequel after sequel, always a difficult act after you've presented your initial original concept, by introducing new material and a fresh setting for each. These stories aren't so much detective stories in that they focus around a single case -- indeed, that is a jolting moment at the end when we realise that we have completely lost track of the initial death that began the novel -- as police procedurals coupled with urban fantasy in its truest sense. The magic of the city; of the tower blocks and the rivers and the tunnels and the ancient stories and archetypes of London.
And for readers looking for representatives of 'diverse' characters, there is the wickedly light touch of a protagonist whose race is revealed not by his struggles against discrimination but by references to his mother's connections among the office cleaning community and his perception of strangers as, say 'a nervous white woman', where 'white' is not an unspoken default...
As usual, a fascinating and tense thriller that I couldn't put down.
"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. In fact, I suspect my reading of the book would have been enhanced by having reread the others in the series more recently, since I only have vague memories of details in the earlier books and, for instance, have now completely forgotten at what stage and how (presumably in the first book?) Peter's colleague Lesley lost her face :-( I do sort of remember Mother Thames and her sassy daughter-rivers, the nightclub hybrids, the demon trap and the underground (or London Underground) civilization (something to do with a fox, as well), but barely in enough detail to pick up that there were references.
I have to say that I was rather hoping the book wouldn't go down the wellworn lines of a romance between Peter and his colleague, and for much of the story their relationship does indeed seem to be refreshingly platonic; there are hints that this may change in the future, though, which I'm sure many of the readers are dying to see but I feel would be rather a pity...
We learn a bit more about the wider history of magic in Europe in the course of this book, with references to German magic under Weimar and Soviet-era war-witches, both of which fit into the pattern of our 'known' past with the sort of satisfying click created by the best alternate history creations :-) So far as I can tell the Russian and German extracts are convincingly accurate, as well -- which is refreshing, after seeing too many recent fanfics with phrases clearly provided via Google Translate!
Modernist architecture as a means of 20th-century magical manipulation really explains a lot, too :-p
As ever, the book manages to come across as rooted simultaneously in a practical knowledge of modern policing, an intimate knowledge of London (it's always odd when scenes make reference to locations you've actually visited personally, like the café in front of the National Film Theatre!) and a well-thought-out theory of magic. I love stories with this degree of world-building, and Ben Aaronovitch manages to keep it up for sequel after sequel, always a difficult act after you've presented your initial original concept, by introducing new material and a fresh setting for each. These stories aren't so much detective stories in that they focus around a single case -- indeed, that is a jolting moment at the end when we realise that we have completely lost track of the initial death that began the novel -- as police procedurals coupled with urban fantasy in its truest sense. The magic of the city; of the tower blocks and the rivers and the tunnels and the ancient stories and archetypes of London.
And for readers looking for representatives of 'diverse' characters, there is the wickedly light touch of a protagonist whose race is revealed not by his struggles against discrimination but by references to his mother's connections among the office cleaning community and his perception of strangers as, say 'a nervous white woman', where 'white' is not an unspoken default...
As usual, a fascinating and tense thriller that I couldn't put down.