#FridayBookShare – Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

#FridayBookShare ~ an excellent idea created by Shelley Wilson. 

With the weekend approaching it’s the perfect time to seek out new books to read, so Shelley created Friday Book Share to help search for that ideal read. I love reading so I’m thrilled to have found Friday Book Share!

The instructions for Friday Book Share are –

Here’s my #2 post: 

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

First line: It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the East Portico of St Paul’s at Covent Garden.

Recruit fans by adding the book blurb: “I used to be a probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service, and to everyone else as the Filth”.

Meet PC Peter Grant.  He will show you his city.  But it’s not the capital that you all see as make your way from tube to bus, from Elephant to Castle.  It’s a city that under its dark surface is packed full of crime.  And of magic.  A city that you never expected….

Grant’s story starts when he tries to take a witness statement from a man who was already dead.  And takes him down a twisting, turning centuries’ old mystery that reckons to set modern London on fire….

Introduce the main character using only three words – Peter Grant is interesting, magical and funny

Delightful design –

Audience appeal: This book was recommended by my husband,so I was expecting a mere history type of story about London, not the magical storyline and the wonderful characters. It is a bit of fantasy and a bit of history, with a police investigation thrown in and has been described as a breathtaking story set in a breathtaking world. It would appeal to anyone with an interest in the magic underlying the modern world.  It is a rollicking story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Your favourite line/scene: I enjoyed the explanations of magic such as this one:

Vestigia is the imprint magic leaves on physical objects.  It’s a lot like a sense impression, like the memory of a smell or a sound you once heard… Some things, stones for example, sop up everything that happens around them even when it’s barely magical at all – that’s what gives an old house its character. Other things, like the human body, are terrible at retaining any vestigia at all – it takes the magical equivalent of a grenade going ff to imprint anything no a corpse.

I have a page on my blog that lists all the books I read throughout the year.   I started it in 2014/2015 and enjoyed the process so much I kept going into 2016. It’s just as much for me to remember what I’ve read and a brief comment about each book.

Here’s a link to my first post for #FridayBookShare in case you’d like to read it.

Enjoy the weekend.

Deb