Vivid voice, fun and dark and original.
I wasn't sure what I was getting in to reading Rivers of London (recommended multiple times on socials), especially as I kept finding the teens/young adult book cover for it (reminding me of the multiple covers the Harry Potter books had) - but I decided to jump in.
I quickly got sucked into the book and the narrative style that Aaronovitch used. For some reason I had Millie Bobby Brown as the voice which caused me a little confusion when I learn that the protagonist and narrator is called Peter Grant (I really didn't read the blurb) - but decided that she could still run the inner monologue.
The Rivers of London is a very London and British book (which I always especially enjoy because I can vividly see the places, hear the accents and usually feel the weather) that's a mix of modern copper plod story with fantastical (and certainly for me: original) characters from gods to vampires to ghosts and wizards.
There's a good balance of funny and witting against the (some times) gruesome and frankly pretty terribly bad things that make for the primary investigation for the protagonist, Grant, to work through.
Really fun stuff - I can definitely see myself returning for more in this series.
4 Highlights
Martin, noting the good-quality coat and shoes, had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.
I asked him if there was such a thing as mermaids.
'That wasn't a mermaid,' he said.
'So there are such things as mermaids,' I said.
'Focus, Peter,' he said. 'One thing at a time.'
Ever since humankind stopped wandering around aimlessly and started cultivating its own food, society has been growing more complex. As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born. A bureaucracy breaks the complexity down into a series of interlocking systems. You don't need to know how the systems fit together, or even what function your bit of the system has, you just perform your bit and the whole machine creaks on
It's surprising how comfortable a hard surface can be when you're tired enough.