Stone and Sky - Ben Aaronovitch ***

By Brian Clegg

I am somewhat amazed that, despite having read all 10 main novels in the series, this is the first of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series that I’ve reviewed. It might seem odd that a book in a series with that title is set in and around Aberdeen, but you need to realise that the ‘rivers’ in question are genii loci – spirits of a river, one of whom is present.

What I love about the series is that it combines police procedural (Aaronovitch delights in details like airwave radios and stab vests) with magic. In the early books, the central character, DS Peter Grant, is a newbie to the whole magic world, but ends up posted with a specialist unit dealing with magical threats (and trying to drag them into the twenty-first century). This time round, the oddities include dangerous magical beasts, kelpies and mermaids.

This is, unfortunately, probably the weakest in the series. In part this is because Aaronovitch splits the first person narrative between Grant and his niece Abigail, who is not with the police but is apprenticed to the unit’s head, Nightingale. This really weakens the police procedural nature of the books, as Abigail does her own thing. Also, I find this middle-aged man’s attempt to give the inner narrative of a young black woman a little queasy-making, telling us that something is ‘bare vexing’ or ‘Nightingale says you’ve got to buss sleeves and ting when you’re finessing the bush’.

Aaronovitch usually gives us a big scene of high risk, this time on an oil platform in the North Sea (though again, splitting the narrative with Abigail, who isn’t present for the denouement, weakens the drama), but the whole context seemed less effective and more contrived than it is in most of the earlier books. And of the main characters, both Nightingale and Beverley (Grant’s wife and a genius loci) feel underused, except in the ‘with a single bound she was free’ ending. 

Reading this inspired me to restart the whole series with the original Rivers of London – and immediately I realise why I enjoyed the early novels so much: it is much better, plunging you into the action. By the end of chapter two, we’ve had a decapitation, a witness who is a ghost, a baby thrown out of a first floor window and a man’s face falling off. Here we have a possible sighting of a magical big cat. Within days I was already on book 4 – but I felt no such urgency to carry on reading with Stone and Sky. But it’s not just the action – Grant’s narration is far more fun in the early books and there’s a constant, driving energy that just isn’t present in Stone and Sky. It’s not the end of the world – even Terry Pratchett had a bit of a dip around this point of the Discworld series before getting even better. Hopefully Aaronovitch can get his mojo back too.

Stone and Sky is not a bad novel. Compared to many real-world fantasies, Aaronovitch’s skill shines through: he can’t help give us a readable book with occasional flashes of humour to lighten the dangerous situations. But it almost feels as if the author is trying to mix a young adult romantasy novel in Abigail’s chapters and the more heavy duty matters in the Grant chapters, and it doesn’t quite work. Whatever you do, read the other books first – don’t start here – but if you have done so, it is still worth adding this to your Rivers of London reading.

You can buy the Stone and Sky from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.

Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.