This is book 2 of the Peter Grant series.

Okay, yes, so my reading list contains a whole bunch of non-fiction books, to balance out the copious fiction I've been reading as of late. Except that I enjoyed Midnight Riot so much, that I ignored my entire reading list, expecting I could squeeze this book in before the next book on my list becomes due in 12 days. And hey, I managed it!

As I enjoyed the last Peter Grant book, I also enjoyed this Peter Grant book. The humour flavor isn't quite Dresden, clearly my reading yardstick for urban fantasy, but Aaronovitch still does the Talking To The Camera / Breaking The Fourth Wall style really well. The humour is drier than Dresden, but still great.

What I am particularly enjoying with the Grant series so far, other than the world building, the magic rules, Grant's scientific inquiry instead of mere acceptance of magic, and the dry wit, are the history lessons. Aaronovitch drops names and events into casual conversation and I'm left wondering, "Wait, what?" Off to Wikipedia I go, and, oh, there's the Great Stink, Tacitus, the sons of Mūsā ibn Shākir, and the Thief-Taker General Jonathan Wild. History lessons dropped into casual conversations that are completely fascinating!

I'm pretty sure once I finish the current 10 book reading list I have to clear the library holds I currently have, I'm going to rip through the next 5 Peter Grant books. Totally enjoying them, strongly recommended so far for fans of urban fantasy.

I knew all this because I’d been reading the Annals of Tacitus as part of my Latin training. He’s surprisingly sympathetic to the revolting Brits and scathing about the unpreparedness of the Roman generals who thought more of what was agreeable than expedient.
Page 1

Yeah. People. In war.

Whatever you see, he’d said, take as long a look as you need to get used to it, to accept it, and then move on as if nothing has changed.
Page 3

EVERY HOSPITAL I’ve ever been to has had the same smell, that whiff of disinfectant, vomit, and mortality.
Page 7

“Do I have a signature?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Nightingale. “When you practice, things have an alarming tendency to catch fire.”
Page 23

The sons of Mūsā ibn Shākir were bright and bold and if they hadn’t been Muslims would have probably gone on to be the patron saints of techno-geeks. They’re famous for their ninth-century Baghdad bestseller, a compendium of ingenious mechanical devices that they imaginatively titled Kitab al-Hiyal—The Book of Ingenious Devices.
Page 25

This is one I looked up. Fascinating!

And what do Nightingale and I have to measure vestigia with?
Page 26

When I read books, I listen to the audiobook when I'm out and about (usually walking) or doing errands or chores (raking leaves, washing dishes, etc.). I much prefer to read the words than to listen to the words, but when a story is engrossing, I want to keep going.

I happened to be listening to the book as I was reading it, and, oh, there are significant differences between the British and Amercian versions of the book. The ebook American version has "Nightingale and I," whereas the British audiobook has "me and Nightingale."

I have to say the "me and _______" form drives me nuts. It is an emerging speech pattern that makes me want to go all grammarian on people's asses when they use it. New pet peeve, I guess.

In 1986 Courtney Pine released Journey to the Urge Within and suddenly jazz was back in fashion and with it came my dad’s third and last brush with fame and fortune.
Page 26

Well, I guess I have a new album to consume now.

My dad always said that a trumpet player likes to aim his weapon at the audience, but a sax man likes to cut a good profile and that he always has a favorite side. It being an article of faith with my dad that you don’t even pick up a reed instrument unless you’re vain about the shape your face makes when you’re blowing down it.
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I’ve never been what you’d call a strong swimmer but if the alternative is being a statistic it’s amazing what you can pull out of the reserves.
Page 112

People don’t like to speak ill of the dead even when they’re monsters, let alone when they’re loved ones. People like to forget any bad things that someone did and why should they remember? It’s not like they’re going to do it again.
Page 119

The central atrium at the Trocadero Centre is four stories high with an open basement that added another story to the fall. The space is crisscrossed at random intervals by escalators, presumably because the architects felt that disorientation and an inability to find the toilets were integral parts of the shopping experience.
Page 223

Cracked me up.

“What made you think Ty would tell you?” asked Nightingale.

“She couldn’t help herself,” I said. “First law of gossip—there’s no point knowing something if somebody else doesn’t know you know it.
Page 239

You don’t experience a bomb blast so much as remember it afterward. It’s like a bad edit or a record jumping a groove. On one side of the moment there is music and laughter and romance and on the other—not pain, that comes later, but a stunned incomprehension.
Page 254

It’s weird watching an elderly parent when he’s half naked. You find yourself staring in fascination at the slack skin, the wrinkles, and the liver spots, and thinking—one day all that will be yours.
Page 259

I grabbed her wrist and twisted her knife hand up and away. The rule for fighting a person with a knife is to start off by making it point away from you and then ensure that it hurts too much to hold on to.
Page 263

Whatever you’ve been told, seeing is not believing. Your brain does a great deal of interpretation before it deigns to let your consciousness know what the hell is going on. If we’re suddenly exposed to something unfamiliar, a damaged human face, a car flying through the air toward us, something that looks almost but not quite human, it can take time, sometimes even seconds, for our minds to react.
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This is an example of the fourth wall explanation thingy that I enjoy.

It’s no fun looking down on people if you can’t let them know you’re above them.
Page 273

I’d been working on loosening the chimney stack with what I call impello vibrato, but Nightingale called will you stop messing about and pay attention, while Faceless had been chatting.
Page 273

For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
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You do this because it is your job, because it’s necessary, and because, if you’re honest, you love it. Repeat this process until the bad dreams stop or you just get used to them—whichever comes first.
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This is book 1 of the Peter Grant series. Finally, a wizard who isn't named Harry. No, wait. Finally a wizard series not in Chicago. No, wait. I give up, it's a wizard in London, not Potter, not Verus, not Harry, but loads of fun, and I am wonderfully delighted to find another modern-day, urban-fantasy, adult wizard series. This book was recommended on micro.blog, as the Rivers of London, which is the English title of this book. I thought, "Eh? Adult wizard not named Harry? Sign me up!"

I enjoyed this book enough to immediately check out book two from the library. I was planning on reading a few other books before reading the second one, but enjoyed this one enough to skip over the carefully curated to-be-read pile and read that one, too.

Right, so, this book.

Peter Grant is a a sucky cop in London. He happens to have a whiff of wizardly talent, which makes him qualified for an apprencticeship in the supernatural branch of the London police. He rather sucks at being a detective, missing a lot of details around him and being generally oblivious to much around him, but seems to do okay as a cop, with his size and such. His partner, a woman, however, is a fine detective, but has to work twice as hard to be seen as half as good.

Shock.

Anyway, Grant has a bit of wizarding in him, and is recruited, with his training actually being difficult. Imagine that, wizarding powers that take some effort and a lot of hard work, over the course of weeks and months and years, to build up. IMAGINE THAT.

I like Grant's science bent, too. "Well, that's nice, but HOW?"

I'm glad there are seven books (so far!) in the series. It's going to be difficult not to read through all of them in one sitting.

This is why you have procedure, training and drill, so that you do things when your brain is too shocked to think for itself—ask any soldier.
Page 47

The window over the stairs had had sheets of black construction paper crudely taped over to block the sunlight.
Page 98

Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and that had to include vampires, didn’t it? I doubted they were anything like they were in books and TV, and one thing for certain, they absolutely weren’t going to sparkle in the sunlight.
Page 98

Cracking up here.

Despite what you think you know, most people don’t want to fight, especially when evenly matched. A mob will tear an individual to pieces and a man with a gun and a noble cause is happy to kill ever so many women and children, but risking a fair fight—not so easy.

That’s why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of “don’t hold me back” while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back. Everyone is always so pleased to see the police arrive, because we have to save them whether we like them or not.
Page 143

Magic, as Nightingale understood it, was generated by life. A wizard could draw on his own magic or on magic that he’d stored by enchantment, which sounded interesting but not relevant to exploding cash tills. However, life protected itself, and the more complex it was, the more magic it produced, but the harder it was to draw off. “It’s impossible to draw on magic from another human being,” said Nightingale. “Or even a dog, for that matter.”
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Even at closing time, Covent Garden was packed; the post-performance crowd was emerging from the Royal Opera House and looking for somewhere to have a bite to eat and a pose, while clusters of young people on school-sponsored holidays from all over Europe exercised their time-honored right to block the pavement from one side to the other.
Page 161

My dad had once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it leads.
Page 172

Sometimes when someone tells you not to go somewhere, it’s better not to go there.
Page 189

The tube is a good place for this sort of conceptual breakthrough because, unless you’ve got something to read, there’s bugger all else to do.
Page 189

Nightingale’s breath started to falter.

“Keep breathing,” I said. “It’s a habit you don’t want to break.”
Page 204

The trouble with the old boy network is you can never be really sure whether it’s switched on or not and whether it’s operating in your interest or some other old boy’s.
Page 204

Sometimes you have to stand still and take the first blow, that way you see what the other man has in his hand, expose his intentions and, if that sort of thing is important to you, put yourself unequivocally on the right side of the law. And if the blow is so heavy that it puts you down? That’s just the risk you have to take.
Page 204

“How fast can you move something?” said Seawoll.

“Not as fast as a bullet,” I said.

“Really,” said Stephanopoulos. “How fast is that?”

“Three hundred and fifty meters per second,” I said. “For a modern pistol. Higher for a rifle.”

“What’s that in old money?” said Seawoll.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if you lend me a calculator I can work it out.”
Page 207

I looked at Seawoll and he gave me the “at last he wakes up” look so beloved of teachers, senior detectives and upper-middle-class mothers.
Page 207

There we continued the time-honored tradition of brazenly lying through our teeth while telling nothing but the truth.
Page 210

“The Fire Brigade are sailors?”

“Not now,” she said. “But in the old days, when they were looking for disciplined guys who knew about water, ropes, ladders and didn’t freak out at altitude. On the other hand, you had a lot of sailors looking for a nice steady career on dry land—marriage made in heaven.”

“Still, Neptune,” I said. “Roman god of the sea?”

Beverley laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair was wet, but I wasn’t complaining. “Sailors are superstitious,” she said. “Even the religious ones know you got to have a little respect for the King of the Deeps.”
Page 256

“It’s not that I’m scared of commitment,” I said to the ceiling. “It’s just that I want to know what I’m committing to first.”
Page 264

“Was that part of the deal?” I asked.

“Apparently so,” said Dad. “Your mum thought it was, when I told her. She said that only a fool expects to get something for nothing.” That sounded like Mum, whose principal saying was, “If it doesn’t cost something it isn’t worth anything.” Actually her principal saying was, at least to me, “Don’t think you’ve got so big that I can’t still beat you.” Not that she ever beat me, a deficiency that she later blamed for my failure to pass my A-levels.
Page 267

“I don’t want to go,” said Henry Pyke.

“You must,” I said. “That’s the mark of true greatness in an actor—knowing, down to the precise moment, when to make his exit.”

“How wise of you, Peter,” said Henry Pyke. “That is the true mark of genius, to give oneself to one’s public, but to retain that private side, that secret space, that unknowable …”

“To leave them wanting more,” I said trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“Yes,” said Henry Pyke. “To leave them wanting more.”
Page 290

Okay, with my renewed interest in many things Caltech, I learned about this book when I was looking at some Wikipedia page that referenced popular culture that included something about Caltech. I'll admit I knew about the big ones, Real Genius and the TV show Numb3rs. Books, however, I knew less so, with the exception of Contact.

This one was a new one for me, and, oh boy, am I glad I picked it up. I've enjoyed Sanford
book I've read so far, though I am deliberately avoiding the Prey series, because, eh, not really interested in those, more interested in the Virgil Flowers humour.

You can tell the Sanford parts reading Saturn Run, said definitely shows through. The characters in Saturn Run have a similar flavor. That the book starts at Tech doesn't hurt, either.

Basic premise: fluffy pretty-boy Caltech grad student is the first to spot a decelerating object near Saturn, and (because objects don't decelerate naturally in space), all hell^H^H^H^Hconspiracy theories break loose. Pretty much the US and China do a mad dash to Saturn to see what the hell this thing is. If not for the space race going on, we'd get there in a unified fashion, but, well, people.

The science in the book is lots of fun, and, much like The Martian, believable (which, I gather in the point, Ctein being Sanford's science guy). If you're not a fan of the science stuff, the long winded technical parts might suck for you. I thoroughly enjoyed them, and strongly recommend this book to my geeky friends who want a fun read. Non-geeky friends, read fast through those part maybe?

If you do read the book, note how quickly you discover that the fluffy guy really isn't so fluffy. Fun stuff.

The other thing is, I looked at his VA psych files, and I suspect Darlington does want something. Desperately. And we can give it to him.”

“What’s that?”

“He wants something to do,” Crow said. “Something serious.”
Page 31

Every smart person does.

“I’m really not interested in killing anybody,” Sandy said. He took a hit of Dos Equis. “Not anymore.”

“If you got to the point where you had to kill someone, you’d most likely be saving the whole crew, as well as your own ass,” Crow said.

Sandy said, “Okay. That, I could do.”
Page 40

Becca was annoyed with herself. She was about to take a trip that maybe one person in a million got to make, that every techie dreamed of, and she couldn’t stop thinking about heat flow integrals.
Page 71

One in a million would be over 7000 people. More like 100 million?

“Hold on a sec.” Howardson was reading through his logs. “I’m looking at the simulation optimization you requested six months back. It’s the right answer—it gets you there fastest, which is what you asked for. You wanted the fastest trip because it reduces the expenditure of life-support supplies.”

“Yeah?”

“But now you’ve changed the question. Implicitly, anyway. You don’t want to get there fastest, you want to get there soonest. Right?”

Crow interjected, “What’s the difference?”
Page 116

Oh boy.

“You may not feel that way in a minute. I’ve got news you’re not gonna like.”

“Santeros scrubbed the mission?”

“That’d make life simpler, not harder. She’s advanced the launch date by five months. You’ve got nine months to get ready.”

Becca responded, and when she ran out of breath, Vintner asked cheerfully, “All done? ’Cause, you know, you were repeating yourself there at the end. I think you said ‘bitch’ at least four times and ‘motherfucker’ five or six.”
Page 117

Cracked me up.

Becca fidgeted. Buying into a schedule she didn’t believe in was a plausible path to professional suicide. On the other hand, quitting in midstream would also trash her reputation. Game theory, she thought. If I quit now, I keep my professional integrity and it’s a sure loss. If I stick it out, there’s a chance I might be able to pull it off and no one will know that I was blowing smoke. A guaranteed loss vs. a possible win.
Page 119

Time to blow smoke!

The news links now had countdown clocks on their screens, and England’s Daily Mail announced a new construction disaster at the top of every cycle, along with rumors of zero-gravity orgies, secret contacts with the aliens (with photographs of Santeros talking with a meter-tall large-eyed silvery alien in the Oval Office), and rumors that the whole trip was a fraud by the Americans and Chinese, just as all twenty moon landings had been.
Page 153

Based on empirical evidence, what would actually happen.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ve been up here for weeks, never a thought about it—the separation. Now I’m thinking about it.” She pushed an egg around her plate, nibbled at a piece of toast.

“Well, stop thinking about it.”

“Not always that easy.” She looked past him, at the shrinking Earth out the window, and at the altitude display, which was steadily clicking off kilometers like a second hand, each clock-tick marking their increasing separation from home.

“No, but you’ll get used to it,” Clover said.
Page 167

Clover sighed and smiled at Sandy. “On our way. Thank God. Life gets easier when there aren’t any choices, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, exactly.”
Page 169

As they headed for the showers, Sandy said to Crow, “He kicked your ass. A pencil-necked shrink. A fuckin’ violinist. A snowflake. A delicate little flower . . .”

“In sports, the rules define outcomes,” Crow said. “He won because I wasn’t allowed to bite his nose off, knee him in the balls, or gouge his eyes out.”

“There’s gotta be some rules,” Sandy said.

“Really? I hadn’t heard that.”
Page 175

Only the criminally stupid or naïve assumed the “other side” was less clever. And who would that be in this case?
Page 183

Designing commercial power plant cooling systems meant dealing with company executives who felt the laws of engineering and even physics ought to be bent to improve the fiscal bottom line.
Page 194

And time. Time needs to be bent, too.

“Nah. The fact is, I don’t have music in my head,” Becca said. “If you don’t have music in your head, you can’t really play—all you can do is reproduce what’s on the page. No fun in that.”
Page 201

But she couldn’t let go of that structure. She’d seen him drawing, freehand, different concepts for guitars that he was manufacturing with Martinez, and asked him to teach her a little drawing. As it turned out, she could draw neither a straight line nor an accurate curved one. She insisted on drawing what she knew, rather than what she saw, a tendency not easily curable.
Page 216

“Sandy...” She paused for a moment, organizing her thoughts before responding. “I have to be. You are a rich, handsome, privileged, white guy. You get to play on the easy level. If you gave a crap, people would take you seriously, automatically, because guys like you get that as a freebie. I’m a short, blond woman who was raised Minnesota Nice, plus I have a cute face and I’m fat! How seriously do you think I’d get taken in the world if I didn’t regularly throw it in their faces?”
Page 218

Sandy’s gaze was fixed on her; it was a little unnerving when he focused like that. “But wouldn’t people like you better if you weren’t quite so, um...” He fumbled for a word.

Becca interrupted him. “What? Assertive? Aggressive? Pushy? Do you really think people will pay more attention to my technical advice, my expertise, if it comes from a nice Minnesota girl? Really?”
Page 219

“Didn’t do the drugs,” Crow said. “I wanted to feel it. I think if anything like that ever happened again, I’d do the drugs.”

“Which is why I’m sitting here watching this moronic vid with a smile on my face,” Sandy said. “They got good drugs now, man. You’re still all fucked up, but it doesn’t hurt as much.”
Page 253

The idea of drugs to help you get through the pain of grief while it is overwhelming, until it settles into a bearable dull ache? Fuck, sign me up for that.

The helmsman began to sob. It was not professional. Zhang found it entirely understandable.
Page 366

“Ma’am, we need to do more than plan for ship security. We also need to plan for what we’d do if security fails and the Chinese manage to take over the ship. That might be a small possibility, but we have to consider it.”
Page 388

“What happens is, your brain gets stuck in a feedback loop. Why did this happen? Is there something wrong with me that it keeps happening—first in the Tri-Border, and now here? What could I have done? What could I have said to her that I didn’t? You get these flashbacks and every time you flash back, the loop intensifies. The meds break the loop and smooth out the thought processes, and eventually time starts to erode the power of the flashbacks."
Page 391

Again, sign me up.

“You’ve been thinking about this.”

“My history in the Tri-Border: trust no one, everything breaks, nothing works as advertised, and if anything can go wrong, it will.”

“And you’re so young.”

“But getting older by the minute,” Sandy said.
Page 392

The level of failure that he felt, the deep melancholy, that was something he could barely endure. Every morning he woke from fitful sleep into a worse nightmare. He’d done his best to be a good commander, to make the right decisions, but all he could say of himself was that his very best had only been enough to keep a near-total disaster from being total.
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