Let’s get this out of the way: I really, really love London. I duly loathe the London Eye, I have my favourite Camden Lock stands and I feel a shiver of excitement whenever I smell the tube’s musk. Other tourists ask me for directions. As soon as I win the lottery – which is only a matter of time, really – I’m moving there. Until then I’m content to take my students there every year (twice, sometimes) and when I show them around, I love […]
River Gods and Scooby Gangs
Now that’s more like it. This fourth installment of the Peter Grant series set in London strikes a better balance between an overarching series plot, the search for a rogue wizard known only as The Faceless Man, and the more immediate story that begins with a car crash and soon involves a growing pile of bodies, a mysterious book, and a large housing project designed by a crazy and possible magic-practicing architect. Amidst this all, Peter and Lesley continue to be trained in magic by […]
Mind The Gap
In the third installment of Ben Aaronovitch’s series about magic, supernatural beings, and a special police squad in London, Aaronovitch does the Whedon/Buffy thing. There’s a “Monster of the month” plot for our hero, Peter Grant, involving a murdered American, unbreakable ceramics, a female FBI agent, and, as you might have guessed, the London Underground system. At the same time, Peter and his fellow officer and friend, Lesley, and his mentor, Inspector Nightingale, are trying to hunt down a rogue wizard known only as the […]
A sexy rogue vampire runs the gangs of steampunk London
Honoria Todd is on the run from vampire nobles in Bec McMaster’s Kiss of Steel. Her father was murdered while working on a vamp cure for the Echelon, the near-immortal royalty who injected themselves with the virus. She’s forced to flee with her sister and brother into the night promising her father never to let them have his notes. She lives under false name in the rookeries of Whitechapel. She lies to get a job working as linguist in the rich part of town to make […]