Sequential magical reading: "Moon Over Soho" by Ben Aaronovitch

Sometimes it's probably just best to stick with a good one-off. Like my last book, this one was a sequel, but of a rather different nature, the second in an "urban fantasy"series of tales featuring Metropolitan police officer and apprentice wizard Peter Grant facing up to various forms of malevolent weirdness in contemporary London. I liked the first book in the series, which I had randomly bought on the strength of its cover. It was an imaginative, funny, streetwise and page-turning story.

Moon Over Soho picks up where the first book left off, embarking on a fresh tale of magic intersecting with the day-to-day life of the great metropolis, indeed two tales, for, as in the first book, a principal plot line and a sub-plot are woven together and gradually merge. Many of the same qualities are there: streetwise humour, a good eye for the multicultural realities of twenty-first century London, an ability to keep you turning the pages as the plot twists and turns... But, I still felt slightly disappointed. It's not that Aaronovitch has lost his touch, I think it's just that so much of the pleasure of the first book lay in discovering a new imaginative world, the gradual revealing of a parallel reality, as novel and surprising to the protagonist as it is to the reader. The trouble is, you can only do that once, whereafter the next story has to be pitched in the by-now-familiar framework. Somehow, JK Rowling pulled this off better in the Harry Potter series, maybe by keeping more back at the outset, maybe also by having a stronger multi-volume narrative arc. An unfair comparison perhaps, but one that serves to illustrate the point.


Another little thing. One of the strongest characters in the first book is the mentor (Dumbledore equivalent) figure of Detective Inspector Nightngale, who takes young Peter Grant in hand. For some reason, he is almost entirely written out of the plot on this occasion. Maybe Aaronovitch wanted to consolidate his principal, Peter Grant, but frankly, this reader missed the quirky otherworldliness of Nightingale. Perhaps too, the secondary characters do not work quite as well; nothing quite as engaging as the fractious, multiracial water sprites and prehistorical divinities of London's underground rivers in this book.

Recommendation? Yes, it was enjoyable, and I wouldn't guarantee not at some point idly picking up book 3 for a quick read, but this did not add a lot of value and maybe the reading time could have been more fruitfully spent.