Amongst Our Weapons

Amongst Our Weapons (2022) Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London)

It’s been two years since the previous full Rivers on London book, although in between we had a story set in Germany, comics, short stories, and Abigail’s novella.

And I am GREAT with all that.

Did I want to know what was happening with Peter? Of course I did. Was I impatiently wanted the next book? Of course I was. But if Ben Aaronovitch needed to write those other stories before he could get to this Peter Grant novel? I am TOTALLY fine with that. I’d rather he take longer giving us a great story than he give a mediocre story to meet deadlines.

Is this great? I’ll probably need to listen to the audio before I give my final decision, but my first judgement is that I enjoyed the hell out of this story.

Or, more precisely, we pried them out of their reluctant fingers by promising that everything that needed logging or signing would be logged and signed, and that the chain of custody would be maintained yea, even unto the end of days, or the first court appearance— whichever came first.

Pure Peter.

Plus Guleed!

(B)efore the PC on the passenger side got a chance to ask Guleed why she was loitering while wearing a hijab in a built-up area, the driver leaned forward to get a look at us and recognized me.

I utterly adore the way casually calls out racism.

ALSO: I will need to go back to the earlier books, but he also does something I’ve not seen frequently–but should see more.

a hefty-looking white woman with sharp blue eyes

He was a white man, looked to be in his fifties, with thinning brown hair cut short, regular features, pale gray eyes

Phillip was a young-looking forty-year-old white man with black hair and light brown eyes.

She was a tall, hippy white woman

It turned out to be a white woman in late middle age

typical London office jockeys, mostly white, mostly from affluent suburbs

The nervous young white man with floppy hair who served as receptionist

a small white woman in a gray zip-up hoody.

a teenaged white girl dressed incongruously in a blue knit twinset and pearls and a blond pageboy wig.

“Hallo, darling,” said a white person with an androgynous face, blue-black hair, and a raven perched on their shoulder.

None of that has to do with the story, but it is with why I love his books so much.

This story has Leslie returned, an avenging angel, and so very many tips to Monty Python, which I initially blanked on despite the name of the book.

And of course Peter remains Peter.

On approach the clean lines fooled me into thinking they were 1920s Art Deco, but as I got closer the brash white-brick pilasters that shot up two stories topped by Corinthian capitals gave it away as late Victorian.

I was struck by one particular passage, with regard to how things might become truly lost.

When I asked Nightingale where it was now, he said he didn’t know.

“I wasn’t told,” said Nightingale. “Nobody who went out into the field was given that sort of information. What we didn’t know we couldn’t reveal under interrogation.”

I did enjoy it very much, but now desperately want to relisten to the entire series: so many lovely lovely hours of Kobna Holdbrook Smith in my ears.

Publisher: DAW

Rating: 8/10

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