I recently came across the excellent Rivers of London books by Ben Aaronovitch. If you liked my book, you’ll like this series.
I’ve often struggled with how exactly to categorize A God for Thieves. Elisabeth is the one who put it out in the world, and the paths she went with broke down into, basically:
Horror > Dark Fantasy
or
Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban
These are both perfectly good classifications for my book. But I often wish there was a category path that went Fantasy > Contemporary & Urban > Crime Fiction. Because what I feel like what I’m writing are crime thrillers that just happen to have fantasy elements in them.
And that’s what Ben Aaronovitch’s books are like. If you like a good mix of humor, magic, and mystery, you could do a lot worse than the first book, Midnight Riot. Aaronovitch’s writing is excellent. He’s built a very believable magical world inside London with its own rules and history. There’s a great mix of twists you see coming and ones that surprise you but make perfect sense on reflection. I also appreciate his excellent characters, with an ethnically diverse and gender balanced cast. Not to mention a sprinkling of references so nerdy even I have to look one up occasionally. I mean, book four has a “Shaka, when the walls fell” joke in it.
I finished reading the first five books in about a month, and I’m eagerly awaiting the June release of book six.
Really, what are you still reading this blog for? Go read the Rivers of London books.