Midnight Riot is a fun mix of so many things that I love in my pleasure reads - the geekiness and the science¹, the dry British humor², and the magical/mythical/phantasmagorical stuff in a big city³. What's not to like?



¹ My whole life, basically. Really.
² Examples - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, even some of China Miéville's stuff.
³ Examples - Harry Dresden books, China Miéville, Neil Gaiman, even Sir Terry.

"Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I won

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Too. Much. Fun.

But not too much. Just the right amount of fun. Ladies and gentleman, if you're looking for a relatively light read, with overtones of the theatre and English puppetry, and undertones of feuding rivers and power struggles, all sifted through the eyes of a police constable who has just discovered that magic is real, and he's been chosen to police it, then this is the book for you!

Step right up, step right up! Meet our star, Peter Grant, a young police constable who just knows he's More...

I enjoyed this book, so much that I didn't want to review it right away because I was still immersed in Peter Grant's London. It's the urban fantasy take on the detective novel, a police procedural that gives a close-up view of a modern London with undercurrents of magic and magical beings. I love the tone of this book--it's wry and humorous, but doesn't let the humor take over the scene. It's one thing to be ready with a quick line, another entirely to go through one's entire life wisecracking, More...

I’m a fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, even though I got tired and stopped reading after #9. After a while the stories became too repetitive and I didn’t see any significant growth in Harry’s character. His smart-ass comments that were amusing in the earlier books started getting annoying towards the end.

In the hopes I would find a fun read similar to the Dresden books, I picked up Midnight Riot. It wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t a great one either. Peter Grant was an interesting ch More...

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective More...

I have to admit that a moderate portion of my liking for this book is probably due to the fact that I am one of those Americans who is instantly charmed when faced with a page of British slang and references. I don’t know if it’s in the genetic memory or what, but I pathetically cannot help myself! Guh…it’s like thar speakin’ mah language but diffrint! However, this book isn’t just a compendium of British slang. I found quite a lot more to love within these pages.

Peter Grant is a young constable More...

Ben Aaronovitch is funny. Midnight Riot's appeal stems from protagonist Peter Grant's humor:

"Do we have a plan B?"
"Molly can do haemomancy," said Nightingale [...] "It might be possible to find [the suspect] that way."
"Why can’t we do it that way now?" I asked.
"Because the odds are five to one against you surviving the experience," said Nightingale.
"So, yeah," I said. "Probably best not to do it that way now, then."

Aaronovitch delivers on his claims and doesn't make the mistake of claiming t More...

Midnight Riot is the kind of book that people like me, absolute anglophile and devoted BBC lover, couldn’t help but like. The humor and the texture to the narrative in this book reads delightfully British, but in a fashion that suggests that England isn’t just Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. It’s also Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven, Being Human, Law and Order: UK, and Luther. It’s upper crust and working class. It’s a mix of past and present. Even deeper, it’s the everyday lives of Britons, not all N More...

I can never keep the new shelf classifications straight, but this has to be a {moderately} dark urban fantasy. It's dark the way Harry Dresden is dark, not like Felix Castor or John Constantine. Bad things happen, but the world itself is not an absolute bastard which wants you to die with a pitchfork in your eye.

I read it. I enjoyed it muchly. I want more from Ben Aaronovitch, soon, please, because my next read is about free market economics and the false rhetorics of capitalism in the early 21s More...

Rivers of London also known as Midnight Riot was written by Ben Aaronovitch who many familiar with Doctor Who may recognise from his writing of classic episodes. Rivers of London was an entertaining, quirky and somewhat gritty read, kept consistent by its main protagonist. It was not a philosophical masterpiece of literature but it did not set out to create the writing equivalent of The Great Wall of China and then walk across it three times. Rather it set out to produce a fun, airy urban fantas More...

What can I say, I loved it. Maybe because I have just finished reading two rather dark, sometimes depressing, fantasy books but I really enjoyed this light (but gruesome) urban fantasy. It's probably the lightest UF I've read. They all tend to be dark and gritty books just because they're set in a city. Cities aren't all evil and danger. Though there is a bit of killing in this one...

I have to say I really enjoyed the characters. The river gods wee done well, Grant was a great main character, Ni More...

Story: ★★★½ stars
*½★ extra for standing out in the land of UF
*★ extra for including jollof rice and groundnut soup!!!!
GRAND TOTAL: ★★★★★ fat, very well-deserved stars!

So after a while of reading UF, one begins to get sorta jaded; it all begins to blend and look similar. Mr. Aaronovitch's debut stands out from the bunch.

How does it stand out, you ask? Let me count a couple of ways:

1. It is being narrated by a guy. Which by itself puts it in the minority of UF books.
1a. To make it even more u More...

Peter Grant is just a rookie cop in the Metropolitan Police Service when he discovers an aptitude for magic, and is taken on as an apprentice wizard. As he comes to realise the complicated supernatural life that infuses London, he is caught up in a case involving a malicious vengeful spirit. A spirit who is twisting the lives of ordinary Londoners and leaving a trail of nasty deaths in its wake. Peter has to learn the magic trade quickly before he and his colleagues becoming part of the game.

Any More...

Please note: I read this book in Jan. of 2011; am just making some fixes to the review here and adding the disclosure that I received a free copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.

My Synopsis: Midnight Riot introduces us to rookie constable Peter Grant. He is learning the ropes in London when, one night, he sees a ghost. From that point, his life will never be the same, because he has come to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale More...

Midnight Riot is a great new book! Peter Grant is a young probationary (rookie) police constable with the London Metropolitan Police Department. He’s on schedule to be assigned to hard desk labor when a man is killed by decapitation. Peter and a fellow officer are stationed at the murder site to keep it secure when he is approached by a ghost who has seen the murder take place. This interaction brings him to the attention to the Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale and Peter is subsequen More...

Once upon a time there was a Mama River and a Papa River and a Copper called Peter.
Jokes aside there really are these characters in the story.
This story serves up a concoction consisting of the humor of Terry Pratchett, a dice of Neil Gaiman's characters and plot and finally a fixer kind of guy and supernatural goings on from Jim Butcher.
Peter is a copper of mixed race ethnicity his mother was a cleaner, his father was a drug addict and grew up in a council estate. He became a down to earth ki More...

"Rivers of London" is an urban fantasy and the most important thing when reading a genre novel is to get a good cast. For me the heroes of genre novels have to have faces. So here is whom I hired for this show. The narrator, cute, hapless Peter Grant was played by Drake:
Ah....




The first love interest - Lesley May was played by a famous Polish actress Pola Raksa, updated to the 21st century for this occasion:



Initially I wanted to stay with Polish actresses for all the female characters and cast A More...

US title – Midnight Riot. Ben Aaronovitch has an excellent pedigree: he wrote two 7th-Doctor-era serials for Doctor Who, and has written DW novels which I will now have to seek out. And he seems to have been the first to send a Dalek up a staircase. Evil, evil man.

I'm becoming an audiobook voice groupie. Which is going to be a problem here, because the sequel to Rivers of London is not (legally) available in the US. Mia Michaels, judging on So You Think You Can Dance, coined a word I've been us More...

I'm a fast reader so getting through a book in two days isn't a problem, except for the fact that I'm easily distracted, so life often gets in the way and books often take much longer to finish than their length would suggest.

Not this one. I began to resent having to do other stuff as it was stopping me from reading this book. Its very well written but not in an obvious way so was not hard to read and the ideas were compelling enough and the mystery interesting enough to pull the reader into the More...

Now this was a breath of fresh air. Which I guess sounds funny if I mention it’s an urban fantasy about a somewhat bumbling cop who takes a witness statement from a ghost and ends up as the apprentice to the last wizard in England. But seriously, this was a breeze of competence and sanity in a welter of bad books.

I think the most important thing is that it’s funny. Not like first person urban fantasy funny, but actually funny. And our protagonist (first person, natch) is great: he’s one of those More...

I first came across Rivers of London on the Kindle store, and downloaded the sample. I was intrigued by the first chapter, and put it on my wishlist. A friend or two read it, and finally one lent me his copy. He thought I'd tear through it in one go.

Not quite true, as it happens. Oh, all in all, I think it took about two hours to read, but sometimes a few days would go by without me reading more. It reminded me a lot of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books -- which is not really a compliment, comin More...

3.75 stars. Midnight Riot is great start to a series and also is simply a fabulous new series for the urban fantasy world. This book is funny, not silly funny like Three's Company, but dry funny with an amazing delivery. Ben Aaronvitch makes very witty observations about human nature and delivers in such a way that it is funny. At the same time, he sets up an intriguing urban fantasy world, playing on existing mythology and bringing new stuff in. He even makes a few Harry Potter jokes.

The main c More...

Another hard to rate book in that I can't really say I like it as much as my favorite books...but it it deserves more than 4 stars. So...5 stars, but not quite the top of my 5 star rating (?).

This is an urban fantasy, a genre that's become so chock full lately that you can't swing a kobold without hitting a new one. Most are(sadly) of the mediocre vein but every now and then you stumble on (or as in this case are directed by a friend on Goodreads) a gem.

Peter Grant is a young man just finishing More...

I think the last time I saw a Punch and Judy show a plague of locusts descended on me.

OK, maybe not locusts… but it sounds much more ominous than what they really were: Ladybirds.

I was eleven and was holidaying (in true British fashion- think ridiculous sunburn and ice cream dribbling down your arm) in Weston-Super-Mare with the entire family when the swarm descended. Seriously, I’m not making this up…. Apparently it happens quite a lot!
And now I can never think of Punch and Judy shows without More...

Peter Grant is a thoroughly modern Copper. He loves beer, curries and football, he fancies his professional partner, has become cynical about being in uniform, has a love-hate relationship with the city of London and generally tries to get on in life while avoiding being pushed into a dull desk job. Yet when called to the scene of a bizarre murder, not to help with the investigation, but to stand guard so rubberneckers don't spoil the crime scene he is quite surprised to be given a statement by More...

So have you ever watched BBCA's version of Law & Order? Or maybe caught an episode or two of CSI? Well smoosh those two together. Now add a heaping, helping of Harry Potter (minus Ron & Hermione and if Harry had grown up to become a police constable with a wry sense of humor). Got all that? Well that is the kinda of/sort of feeling you get when you read this book -- that BBCA L&O/CSI/Harry Potter mash-up feel. Only with super, delightful witty writing.

Peter Grant is a probationary co More...

This is the first of a new UF series, called Rivers of London in the UK, and Midnight Riot in the US (why the name change, I have no idea).

Police Constable Peter Grant meets a ghost one night, who gives him some information on a murder. This not only saves Peter from the horror of being assigned to the Case Progression Unit (the paperwork department) within London's Metropolitan Police; it also opens up a whole new career avenue working within a secret branch of the Met, and learning magic from More...

This was a nice change of pace from the more serious reading I've been doing for the most part so far in 2012. A paranormal police procedural which takes place in London involves a very new constable, Peter Grant, in a police division he'd never heard of during his training. This division deals with things magical. Peter becomes involved when he has a conversation with a ghost. And the action takes of from there. There are old gods of London, wizards, various ghosts and a few creatures of specie More...

I probably should've rated this five stars. But I'm kind of a bitch when it comes to giving SUPER HIGH RATINGS even when the book is SUPER AWESOME (reserved for books like the Mistborn series d=n.n=b ). But this book was really good. It took me longer than usual to finish it, but that's just 'coz exams suck. The humour was brilliant, the main character was awesome and I'm not writing a long review for this so I'll just leave you with the Doctor.

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A beautifully sculpted supernatural impression of London with a creepily imagined population of ghosts, local deities straight out of legend, all managed by the local police force, some of whom are also wizards.