Ben Aaronovitch

This is starting to grow on me ... after four listens. I love Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narrations but I'm not sure about his Gussie. The comparison with Hugh Laurie's Bertie is inevitable. All the other voices seem spot on, which is a pity because Gussie is speaking most of the time.
Thomas Nightingale hurries to Jazz Age New York City in pursuit of the source of enchanted instruments. Luckily for him, there's a graduate of their wizard school already in place with a bed and an all-knowing valet. He pressures the host, Augustus Berrycloth (wha-at?) - Young, into helping him and, annoyingly to Gussie, funding their sleuthing. I keep thinking that Gussie could have done more. I suppose it's a combo of cowardice and vanity.
As a pastiche of Wodehouse and Bertie Wooster, it pretty much works. There's a love of Wodehouse here and that makes it all right. But just all right. As disappointing as it was, I can't stop listening!… (more)

Mmm I love me some urban fantasy. It was especially fun to read an urban fantasy where I know all the locations in real life.

Aside from the incredibly weird sexual comments here and there which put me off at points, this was really enjoyable. Loved all the characters, and the fun moments merged well with the more action packed parts at all, giving the book the most amazing ~quirky~ vibe.

At first I was concerned with how the fantasy aspect would become relevant to the plot, but once those elements were better established it became clear that this would be a great book. Let's hope that continues and it becomes a great series ^^… (more)

This latest installment of the Rivers of London series brings us back in time to 1920s New York, where recent arrival Gussie Berrycloth-Young—a jazz aficionado and basically a magic-wielding variant of Bertie Wooster—finds himself caught up in an adventure with a young Thomas Nightingale. This is a fun, page-turning Jazz Age adventure, but the emphasis is more on "vibe" than "depth." Ben Aaronovitch continues to be more interested in building out the universe of his stories than in digging more into characters like Nightingale whom we've come to know, but we did get a couple of nice moments with him and some little bits of character work that maybe (I hope?) will come back up again in future books in the series.… (more)