Once again, I am unhappy because I am all caught up in the Rivers of London universe.
BUT- I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, and I was lucky enough to be able to dive right in to another irreverent British crime series!
Amongst Our Weapons, the latest from Ben Aaronovitch, is a return to form. After the strange (but not entirely off-putting) Douglas Adams worship of False Value we have returned to the archaic and architectural weirdness of the rest of the Rivers of London series. It has everything I love and look for: magic! house boats! religious weirdiosity! ancient gods! new terrors! I was delighted to be back in the world of DC Peter Grant and his weird and wonderful cast of family and friends. Bonus points to ancient metal working, WWII secrets, and multiple Lord of the Rings jokes. If you find yourself on the fence with DC Peter Grant and friends, please keep reading! It’s worth it!
I was meandering in a melancholy haze post Amongst Our Weapons and then BAM! Slow Horses fell into my lap. Well, literally, it fell onto my front porch! It’s been adapted for TV, and I did not remember doing so, but I entered a giveaway on Goodreads and BAM! There it was, sitting on my porch and begging me to be read. It wound up on my TBR because of Rivers of London (if you liked this, you should read this!) so diving in next was kismet.
What is this River connection? Well, River Cartwright is the “main” character of Slow Horses. Why the quotes? Well, the POV jumps from character to character at a fast and furious pace; forget chapter breaks, sometimes we’re charging from paragraph to paragraph. But you know what? The view jumping is never confusing! It’s always thrilling! It’s never confusing, but it’s sometimes confounding: who did what to WHAT? They’re actually WHO?
Mick Herron often suffers from “man writing women” syndrome; even when we are in their voice, every female character stops to look in the mirror and catalog the “ravages” of age. Every male character is hung up on the fuck/unfuckability of every said female charater. I want to give the benefit of the doubt to “well, male characters are garbage”, but the women never stop disparaging themselves in their “own” voices!
Anywho, Slow Horses is great despite the above complaints. A whole chapter of “fuckup” MI5 agents? Conspiracy? London traffic trouble? I am down- double down- and I cannot wait to read more.