Rivers of London got the introduction out of the way, so now it’s time for Moon Over Soho to really build out the world.

I really love seeing Grant exploring the magic of the world. He’s doing science to magic. I do enjoy books that do that. (Plus, it’s funny!)

I had jokingly developed my own scale for vestigia based on the amount of noise Toby made when he interacted with any residual magic. I called it a yap, one yap being enough vestigia to be apparent even when I wasn’t looking for it.

The yap would be an SI unit, of course, and thus the standard background ambience of a Central London pub was 0.2 of a yap (0.2Y) or 200 milliyaps (200mY).

Also, more worldbuilding about what the ‘Rivers’ are (fae? or at least fae adjacent). More talk about vampires. And of course… What’s the deal with Nightingale?

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve zapped with a fireball?’ I asked.
‘That would be a tiger,‘said Nightingale.
‘Well don’t tell Greenpeace,’ I said. ‘They’re an endagered species.’
‘Not that sort of tiger,’ said Nightingale. ‘A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.’
I stared at him. ‘You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?’
‘Actually I knocked out two,’ said Nightingale. ‘I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver’s eye slot and one down the commander’s hatch - brewed up rather nicely.”

Plus, we get piles more London, this time around digging into the musical/jazz scenes. I managed to go through the first book entirely expecting Grant’s parents to be out of the picture (that’s just the way urban fantasy always seems to go), so it’s fascinating to see them on page and actually playing interesting roles in the story!

My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become a Londoner.

Weirdest change of this series: Grant falls quickly and deeply in ~love~ lust with someone (from a case!) and there are a number of decently explicit on screen sex scenes. I didn’t necessary see that one coming.

Also plotwise, I was … surprised by the ending. Not in who the big bad ended up being, more more what happened after that. It felt sudden and perhaps unearned, like we’d reached the end of the book and had to warp things up. I’m curious if we’ll get any fallout of that in future books, but I don’t really expect to.

I did really like the scenes with Leslie though (from the first book), especially–and counter to my first point–her ending. That… now that has some interesting potential for the series.