Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“That which does not kill us,” I said, “has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.”

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

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Peter Grant and his partner of sorts, Lesley May, have to do a lot of explaining themselves. Not just their actions as members of The Folly, the (tiny) branch of the London Met that deals with “unusual circumstances”, but also every reference that they make about the modern world. Why is that? They’re making these references to The Nightingale; their commanding officer who has been fighting the bad guys (thieves, murderers, Nazis) since before WWII. Before WWII? But how? Well, Nightingale stopped aging in the […]

Spooky Spelunking Ahoy!

Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

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…but before we dig in, let’s celebrate a Pulp reference! Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge,” said Stephanopoulos. “He was a student at St. Martins College. Ha! Delightful. This series is chock full of geeky innuendo. Come for a magical rollick through London, but stay for the myriad Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett, Dr. Who, and Tolkien references- just to name a few. Somehow, despite many references to the fantasy that came before and continues to ripple around the world of Rivers of London, this […]

When the London Met Crashes into Urban fantasy

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

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Like every Dresden Files fan, I’ve been flailing around for ages with the lack of new releases. And with the announcement that the next two books will be out later this year my impatience has not gotten better, but worse! So  I recently started hunting around for something to keep me occupied. And I ended up landing on Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant novels. I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with these – I had read a sample of Rivers of London a few years ago, but I […]

Splashing into the Rivers of London

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

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I’d seen this author and series pop up from time to time in CBR, and my curiosity finally overcame my aversion to jumping into a series. How could I continue to ignore the siren call of that terrific cover?! I am ever-so-glad that I went ahead and judged a book by its cover, because I thoroughly enjoyed this police-procedural-gone-off-the-rails. It had all of the inner workings of the police bureaucracy that I, for some reason  find strangely enthralling. The officers had all of the spark […]

Messing Around a Lot in the Woods

The Fifth Wards: Good Company by Dale Lucas

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The Fifth Ward: Good Company was kind of hit or miss for me. I totally saw Rem’s big personal reveal coming a mile away, and a lot of the other characters’ reaction to it were not surprising either. Of course Indilen and Torval are going to accept it; on the one hand, I’m glad there wasn’t a lot of unnecessary drama there, but on the other, there was so little reaction it’s like all that time trying to build it up was wasted. The set […]

Police, Adjective

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My word, this feels like the police procedural to end all. For reasons I can and cannot spoil. I’m not a big fan of police procedurals. I prefer private eyes or unlikely detectives in the mold of Hitchcock. In real life, detective work doesn’t get solved by a Sherlock Holmes-type using inductive reasoning until the killer is revealed by sheer cleverness. Instead, it takes hard, grinding work, and if a case is solved, it’s usually due to a combination of labor and luck. If a […]



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