I finished Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch about two months ago. It's a supernatural horror crime novel set in a magical version of London, and a fun read although it didn't jump to the top of my favourite-ever list.

Plus points:

- The main character actually had a proper background and personality (mixed race British/African) which played into the plot.

- It was was a sexy book without being sexist, a hard feat for a writer to pull off, especially when the main character is a male British cop.

- It made me look forward to the sequel, and I haven't felt that way about a book in a while.

- A lot of grisly things went on, especially at the start. But unlike The Lies of Locke Lamora which I read a few months previously it didn't come across like gratuitous torture porn and wasn't enough to put me off checking out the sequel. It was all necessary for the plot.

- There were lots of different female characters. Bad things happened to the women, but perhaps even more so to the men. There was never that use of cheap thrills violence on women that's prevalent in many crime dramas.

- Fantastic supporting characters, who all really felt like they had their own personalities and motivations. This was the biggest plus of the book.

- I really cared about the characters! I was shocked by some of the twists.

The one minus point:

The main character kept having these major leaps of logic to solve mysteries. They were real big tah-dah! moments. But the reasoning for these was always incomprehensible.

The first time it happened I thought I just hadn't been paying attention, or I was being a bit slow. By about the third time I was sure it was the book, not me. That was confirmed when I read other reviews which pointed out the same problem.

I got over this by just ignoring these parts completely, like I do in BBC Sherlock. When Sherlock makes some ridiculous leap of logic it's never very believable, but at least it's fun. Here it was just baffling.

I can see what the writer was trying to do. But it did detract a little because these were supposed to be climactic turning points of the book.

Anyway, pretty good. 7/10

Inspired by schemingreader

Books I read in 2013, with a short word on each.

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