Reviews with content warning for Vomit - Midnight Riot

The misogyny, fat-phobia, and horniness was very off-putting. I wanted to DNF this book, but it was for book club so I didn't.

I think the premise had a lot of potential, and I did enjoy some aspects of the storyline, but it was not executed well.

I would absolutely love a book (not by this author) from the perspective of Mother Thames, or one her tributaries, though!

Content Warnings

innocuus's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark hopeful informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

Content Warnings

itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

This book was really promising and had a very strong start, but as things went on I think it suffered from having too many ideas that didn't mesh cohesively together. It resulted in a lot of repetition and a lot of descriptions of the main character walking, driving and running everywhere and limiting the interesting parts of the action (then again given he was a police officer, I'm not surprised).

Things I liked:

Having a POC protagonist and going into detail about the struggles of his childhood was interesting.
I really loved the idea that every river in London was represented by a character that was either chosen by the river or born into the family of rivers.
I liked Nightingale's character and, ironically for a mystery book, the fact that his past wasn't spelled out and gave him some sorely needed intrigue.

Things I didn't like:

The protagonist didn't really have a strong character or any flaws that weren't certain characters bashing us over the head with "oh you have a shit home life and you fucked up your education" or "you need to be more focused". To me those aren't really flaws, or at the very least strong flaws that could cause interesting conflict in the story.
On a similar side note,
while it was nice to have the protagonist and the rivers be POC/mixed as generations went along, I feel like the author was trying to express how they were both African-British families from a different diaspora from one another, but didn't. The rivers family seem to have some kind of West African/Yoruba heritage, but the protagonist was just "African-British".
As mentioned above, the story suffered from too many ideas that didn't mesh well together. In particular, I feel as if the story suddenly spinned into
acting out the play of Punch and Judy, with the culprit being the ghost of an actor for Punch out of nowhere.

I think the author should have leaned more into the idea of people being forced to act out the roles of fictional characters if he wanted to include this element in the book
. This also meant the titular rivers of London characters felt superfluous in a book that was named after them. The tensions between the two river families went nowhere and was an absolute waste.
Part of me should have honestly expected this but some of the descriptions of the women were a bit leery.
cw for rape
Towards the end, a bit character ends up having part of his penis bitten off after trying to force himself onto someone and we're expected to sympathise with him. Nah mate, you got what you deserved for forcing yourself on someone.

Content Warnings

melshoo's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Fun urban fantasy, fun narrator, fun use of magic. I enjoyed the humor in the narration and appreciated the practical approach to magic (the use of ppe to protect against exploding apples comes to mind). I also liked the attempt to reconcile magic with modern technology (instead of handwaving it away like some other stories do). The plot didn’t seem to hold up to the rest of the story. The antagonist was much less interesting than everything else so I didn’t care as much about the climax or resolution of the main plot.

Content Warnings