Second book in the PC Grant series, and I loved it as much as the first. You can read the review for that here, but the short of it is that PC Peter Grant discovers there’s magic in the world, and Peter becomes the first apprentice in ages.
Aaronovitch writes with a lot of British snark, humor, and a lot of culture. I used to live in the UK, and reading these books make me miss London (even though that wasn’t where I actually lived). The writing is fun, light, but serious and dark where it matters. When I reviewed book 1 I think I called it Harry Potter for adults, and that analogy still stands.
I love that the magic system is rooted in science (like, really rooted in science), and there’s so much history and culture throughout these books. You’ll learn a lot, and I enjoy learning, particularly history. Also, this book has more than it’s fair share of jazz, and though that’s not my genre of choice, I love that it revolved around music.
This book is both better and worse than the first one. It’s darker, doesn’t take as long to build up (’cause duh, it’s the second book), and there’s more stuff going on in general. The ‘case’ is more interesting overall, and I love that we get to learn more about the magic system and see PC Grant develop as a magician. At the same time, I didn’t care for the romance. Or well, let me rephrase: the romance is fine, I don’t mind that PC Grant has relationships, and it’s fun to see the character being fleshed out. (No pun intended). But I didn’t care for all the sex scenes. There’s a lot of them considering book 1 had none, so that’s a 100% influx in sex. Really felt like a very different kind of book, as if Aaronovitch suddenly decided he wanted to pull in a whole different kind of readers. I’m sure lots of people love it, I just felt like it was out of place.
The ending is really good, really, really good. Much better than book 1, and I can see me reading more of these books, but for the moment I don’t have any of them. Maybe when I have spare room on my TBR, in say… 40 years?
Highly recommended if you enjoy snappy British urban fantasy. … God I miss the UK.
Trey Stone, Author 
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