"Rivers of London" and "Moon Over Soho" by Ben Aaronovitch

OK. I liked these books, in a super nerdy sort of way. I wouldn't say I loved them, but they are definitely likeable books, and I would probably continue reading the series if given the chance.

Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho were the first two books I got as part of my experiment to read alphabetically through the fiction section of the Melbourne library, and I honestly didn't even look at the book jackets before hauling them off to the checkout counter. When I did get home and read the back cover descriptions, I was like, oh, these look pretttttty geeky.

And they are, but in a cute way.

The back of one of the jackets said, "This is what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz."

Well, kind of. The main character, Peter, is nothing like Harry Potter in terms of personality -- but the premise of his story is sort of similar. Peter's a detective with the London police force who has recently discovered he has magical powers. Yeah. So basically, he can see ghosts, and he can converse with river gods and goddesses, and he can make flames jump out of his palm at will, and all that other fun magicky stuff. Oh yeah, and he has a Dumbledore-esque magical mentor who's a billion years old and is named Nightingale. (Of course.)

As with Harry Potter, the fun of the series is in how the magical world collides with the ordinary world. The author, Ben Aaronovitch, does a great job of making the fantasy aspect of the series fun and silly and tongue-in-cheek. No, it's not believable, but it's not supposed to be.

The best part about these books is the humor. Aaronovitch has a great sense of humor, and the jokes and one-liners are all over the place. There are some real gems in these books, and definitely places where I did actually laugh out loud. It's the sort of humor I love -- dry, sarcastic, not-very-nice humor, but witty enough that no one cares that it's not very nice. The characterization is great, too -- I love the way he portrays people. Sergeant Stephanopolous, for example -- Peter's no-nonsense, admittedly dyke-y boss on the police force. She's awesome, and original, and very entertaining without really even doing anything, all because of the way Aaronovitch has written her.

Where these books are lacking (in my opinion) is in the plot. They're supposed to be detective novels, but I found myself not caring at all about whether Peter solves the mystery or not. I just didn't get what was going on, except at a very vague, high-level understanding, and I didn't care. I was more interested in the whole, Wow, Peter's discovered he's a wizard. What's he gonna do next, wizard-wise? aspect of the books, rather than the actual solving of the crimes. For one thing, the crimes seemed so bizarrely out-there to me (a woman biting off penises? babies being thrown out of windows?) that I lost interest. I mean, I know it's a weird fantasy-esque novel, but the crimes just seemed unnecessarily bizarre. And the way they unfolded was disconnected and weird, sort of like, hey, here's an interesting scene about Peter learning how to do a spell, and hey, all of a sudden here's a scene about the crime itself, and hey, all of a sudden Peter's hanging out with his parents, just chilling, and hey, all of a sudden Peter's driving around with Nightingale talking about how magic can melt your iPhone. There also seem to be plots buried within plots that didn't make a lot of sense. (I had no real interest in the drama with the river gods, for example -- it just seemed stupid and extraneous to me.)

I don't know, it just seemed like these books would have been a lot better if there had been sort of a heart-pounding, intensity-building progression of the crime scenes to a satisfying resolution at the very end. Instead, the plot was all over the place. And look, I have no problem with subplots and digressions, but I think they do need to have at least some meaning to them. Otherwise you lose focus. And that's what happened: I lost focus on the "mystery" side of the plot. I didn't even care to go back and figure out what I'd miss when I did miss something -- I just kept plowing right on ahead. The saving grace of these books is that they are funny and well-written and breezy, which is what kept me reading.

The other thing is, I don't think I really like Peter. He seems shallow to me. Number one, he seems like he could be a womanizer -- he treats Lesley (his love interest of sorts) like crap in the second book, and number two, while I like his humor, it's almost so glib and flippant that it starts to grate on your nerves. I don't think I'd enjoy hanging out with Peter in real life. (Except for the flame-creating thing, which would make for a pretty sweet party trick.)

All in all, though, I did like this series. I think the good points outweigh the bad. If you like British humor and Harry Potter and fantasy-but-not-too-fantastical-fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this series quite a lot. Worth a read.