Rivers of London

I’ve been reading this series of books since they came out as I’ve always been a sucker for urban magic, showing the magical underside of our ordinary world, revealing the wizard behind the curtain.

Rivers of London introduces us to the recurring cast of the series; Peter Grant, Lesley May, Thomas Nightingale, the Rivers of London, Molly, and some others, as Peter and Lesley become embroiled in the magical worlds and feuds of London.

The development of the characters whilst investigating a series of seemingly unrelated crimes is done extremely well, weaving the personal into the overall setting, foreshadowing a lot of future stories in this first outing.

Peter’s development as a magician is well-paced and developed in a way that you could follow as more of the secrets of The Folly revealed, this includes building some of Nightingale’s and the societies back history.

My favourite’s though are the Rivers and the relationships between Mama Thames and Old Man Thames and their children.

Ghosts, genius loci, secret societies, history, police procedural, vestigium, there is a lot introduced but keep up and you are massively rewarded.

This is a well-paced story and much darker than the humour makes you think it will be so watch out for that.