Amongst Our Weapons

I think this is one of the better stories in this series. I have some reservations about it, but nevertheless I find it readable, exciting, and entertaining. It keeps us in touch with established characters while introducing some new ones.My reservations:1. I dislike over-powerful adversaries, and the Angel of Death that appears here is excessively endowed with superpowers. This kind of thing is unnecessary, it weakens credibility, and it leads to a feeling of anticlimax when the unstoppable force is stopped in the end. In principle, I prefer a story such as [b:Whispers Under Ground 10814687 Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3) Ben Aaronovitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349807829l/10814687.SY75.jpg 14864236], in which an ordinary murderer without superpowers is responsible for a novel-length mystery.2. Predictably, the end of this story involves stopping the unstoppable force by way of some rather unconvincing mystic mumbo-jumbo.3. The new characters added to the series don't add up to much. Danni Wickford is quite active in the story but rather dull. Grace Yutani has unusual characteristics and might become interesting, but doesn't do a lot here, and is hampered by communicating only in sign language. The others have minor roles.4. I don't think we ever discover what the rings were designed to do, nor why David Moore was so desperate to find his ring.5. By the end of the story, it seems that the Angel of Death was given her powers by a mediæval wizard. Were mediæval wizards so much more powerful than modern ones? How, then, did they manage to operate in secret and stay out of recorded history? Why did this wizard bestow such powers on a mere woman, rather than wielding them himself?Despite these reservations, overall I like the book well enough to give it four stars, which is pretty good: I award five stars only to top favourites.As the series goes on, it's gradually accumulating more and more characters and magical effects. Will this accumulation become unmanageable? It seems that the next installments will be a couple of novellas outside the main stream of the series, thus avoiding the problem; but later on the main stream will presumably continue, and I wonder where the author will decide to take it.This book has added Peter and Beverley's twins, Grace Yutani, Danni Wickford, and even Francisca and Heather, who may have some further role in events, unless they disappear without trace. Furthermore, Nightingale is now definitely planning to retire; not soon, but soon enough that planning to do without him will have to start.One way of dealing with the accumulation of characters is to kill them or send them out of the way. This author seems generally reluctant to kill regular characters, but Lesley May now makes only occasional brief appearances, and I don't think Varvara the Night Witch has made an appearance since [b:Broken Homes 16078584 Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4) Ben Aaronovitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403204872l/16078584.SY75.jpg 21875874]. When last heard of she was apparently still in London, but in this book she's not even mentioned, which is a bit surprising.