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

I went in expecting something like [b:Neverwhere 14497 Neverwhere (London Below, #1) Neil Gaiman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348747943l/14497.SX50.jpg 16534][b:Neverwhere 14497 Neverwhere (London Below, #1) Neil Gaiman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348747943l/14497.SX50.jpg 16534] but instead, this book delivered something like a mix of Harry Potter, CSI, with just the slightest touch of Gaiman.Overall, this was a really fun read with a compelling lore. The book is soaked in London/English pop culture without being obnoxiously unintelligible to anyone not from London. Some references went over my head, while I managed to catch others. The plot was overall engaging and the pacing was good throughout the book - it managed to balance setting up the world and the magic system, all of which is completely new to our protagonist, while still keeping the action of the plot ongoing at a steady pace.There were some aspects of it I didn't enjoy as much, like how male-gazey it was with the main female characters, even though our protagonist Peter Grant does not overstep boundaries and respects personal space, but his thoughts, lusty as they sometimes got, got a bit annoyingly much. Leslie and Beverly, the two main female characters, definitely have their own personalities, agency, and skills, but I didn't feel like we saw enough of that or them, since the book is told from the first-person perspective of Peter.The last third of the book got really confusing to me. I had a hard time trying to keep up with all the action and information that was coming on fast and furious. I probably got enough of a gist to vaguely understand how the story wrapped up, but if I had to explain it in detail to someone, I'd probably still be lost. I did enjoy the world, the magic system, and the lore that Aaronovitch set up though, and would still continue on the series at some point for that. I've heard that he gets better in his treatment of female characters as the series goes on, so there's that to look forward to as well.