Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

You may remember I reviewed "Rivers of London" last summer. "Moon over Soho" is the sequel. In the last review, amongst other things, I said:

1. "You know those detective stories where the male lead character meets attractive female characters and they rapidly find themselves in an explicit sex scene? This isn't one of those stories." and
   
2. "The fact that much of the romantic tension still remains at the end of the book suggests to me that the author intends to develop the relationships between these characters over several books..."

The first thing I should say is that Moon over Soho fails to follow in the footsteps of those observations. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Minor spoilers may follow, but I'll not give anything significant away.

Rivers of London ended up with one of the potential love interest characters seriously injured following the events described in that book. While she does have a minor role in this book, her part in the story is surprisingly brief and she only really exists here to make our hero feel a bit guilty, every now and then. The other potential love interest character from the first book doesn't feature here at all, so maybe I got the wrong impression from the first book, but anyway.

The story carries on with our hero, the apprentice to the supernatural-investigating police inspector, investigating two different but connected magical murder inquiries. In one, a series of apparently healthy and very talented jazz musicians die of 'natural causes' in unusual circumstances. In the other, a series of men die in very painful ways, apparently at the, erm, hands of a murderer with 'vagina dentata'. Nuff said. (Google it if you need more info, which you really don't.)

The story is entertaining and moves along at a good pace, which accelerates nicely towards the conclusion. Along the way we find out a bit more about our hero's family, a little bit more about magic, quite a lot about jazz, and a little glimpse into the country's magical past. I suspect there's more there for future books, but then again I was wrong in my predictions after the last book, so I could be wrong again.

As I hinted above, there is a lot more sex in this book than in the last. It kind of springs out of nowhere and seems a bit out of place, but then you come to realise that actually it is part of the plot and is there for a purpose. It actually does serve to make the conclusion a bit more involving.

There are fewer instances of the clunky writing/editing that I noticed in the first book, although there are still one or two points where the narrative jumps in a slightly disconcerting way - usually when providing a bit of back story for an event or character. But that's a minor niggle.

It becomes apparent that there is a 'Moriarty' type criminal mastermind somewhere in the background in this story and it is both annoying and intriguing in the way that his storyline is not resolved by the end of this book.

The two primary crime stories are both resolved here, one in a satisfactory way, and the other a bit less so. Rather than being a single plotline in its own right, the second murder inquiry becomes merged into the larger 'Moriarty' type plot, so its conclusion is brief and not fully resolved. But don't let you stop that reading this excellent book.

So, should you read this book? Yes, I think so, but only if you read Rivers of London first.

Is it better than its predecessor? No, but its not significantly worse either. More of the same really. If you liked the first, then you'll like the second. And probably the third too.

Will I read the next installment of the story "Whispers Underground" when it is published in the summer? Absolutely, yes.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Just finished reading this. It seemed like quite a short book, or maybe I just got engrossed in it and read it faster than usual, its hard to tell when you're reading on a Kindle.

The basic plot (no significant spoilers) is that a young London uniformed police constable gets posted to the scene of an inexplicable murder and interviews one witness, who happens to be a ghost. As a consequence of this and other events, he ends up apprenticed to the London police's only supernatural-investigating inspector. Yes, more or less a London police 'X-Files'.

The plot is interesting, engaging, fast moving and fun. About 3/5ths of the way through the book, you think you see how its going to resolve, and then wonder how the author is going to pad that out for the remaining chapters, and then the plot twists, and twists again, and again. In quite a roller coaster ride of events.

For the most part, the book is well written, but there are a few clunky scenes where it seems that a few lines of dialogue or description are simply missing. For example, at the end of the 2nd murder scene events, one of the characters dies. I read the page about three times and its still unclear to me how they died. In one paragraph they were running past our hero, in the next they were dead and sprawled on the floor, but with no description connecting the two. In a couple of other places (though none as obvious as that one) there seem to be short snippets of description that are simply missing. But its not a huge problem, and didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the story.

You know those detective stories where the male lead character meets attractive female characters and they rapidly find themselves in an explicit sex scene? This isn't one of those stories. There's a nicely written underlying air of unresolved sexual tension that runs through parts of this story as the main character completely fails to have liaisons with his female co-worker and one of the other female characters in the book. The fact that much of the romantic tension still remains at the end of the book suggests to me that the author intends to develop the relationships between these characters over several books, and that very much makes me want to go straight on to the next book, although the reality of an unresolved storyline stretching across three or more books might get annoying after a bit. But maybe it won't come to that.

So, I'd recommend this book to you. Its a lot of fun, is quite interesting, and there's clearly much more involving these characters to come in future books.

Oh, and I've just discovered that Ben Aaronovitch was one of the writers on Doctor Who back in the late 80s. He is responsible for the scene in which a Dalek was first witnessed (by the 7th Doctor and Ace) hovering up the stairs! Actually, I remember that story with some fondness, although the SFX were typically rubbish, as I recall.

And one of the many problems of having a Kindle is that I could simply buy 'Moon over Soho' right now and start reading the next book straight away...

Kindle!

Reader, I bought one.

Thoughts to follow in due course.

Kindle?

I love the look and size of the new Amazon Kindle.

I like the idea, and the cost seems reasonable. But I have some doubts. So I'm weighing up the pros and cons... your opinions are appreciated.

Pros: Compact, portable, user-friendly, good battery life, large (and growing) selection of titles available, bookmarks in lots of books, no more piles of books cluttering up cupboards and wardrobes in my house, it now views PDFs natively, (some) titles are (a bit) cheaper than buying a physical book, instant purchase and read anywhere - no more 'I have nothing to read tonight'...

Cons: DRM, you can't lend books to other people, approx 2/3 of the books on my current Amazon Wishlist are not on Kindle, e-books aren't (on the whole) that much cheaper than physical books, some are even approx the same price as physical books, which is just cheeky...

One of my biggest concerns is related to the DRM. With my iPod, i'm still one of those people who buys the physical CD and then transfers DRM free mp3 to my iPod. That means that all my songs are on my current iPod, and I can transfer them to my future iPod, or future non-iPod mp3 player, etc. And even the DRMed downloads I have from the iTunes store are physically on my computer (with licenses), I can back them up to disc and keep them safe should anything go wrong.

I believe you cannot do this with the Kindle. Kindle titles are 'backed up' online by Amazon, so I have no control of my own media. If they muck up (which might not happen to me, but statistically is highly likely to happen to someone) then they'll lose the books that have been paid for. Potentially, you could end up paying for nothing. Also, I was reading into it and the book licenses are limited to a finite number of devices. OK, I don't need my books to be on many devices at once, but what if I upgrade the reader every couple of years? At some point there will come a time when I cannot add a book I have paid for to a new device that I own, because all the licenses have been used up on previous devices. A book on my shelf will never expire in this way, although it could get worn out by over-reading and need replaced.

But is this an important issue? I don't know. Its all hypothetical.

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Update: just compared prices of all the books on my wishlist which are on Kindle...

If I bought all of them on Kindle compared to real books, I'd make a saving of £27.12, or 22% of the real book price. One ('hard to find') book in particular has a Kindle price of only 36% of the real book price. But then again, one on the list was more expensive on Kindle than in paperback, only by 45p, but hey.

Still undecided.