Tough Traveling: Mentor

The Thursday feature "Tough Traveling" is the brainchild of Nathan of Review Barn, who has come up with the excellent idea of making a new list each week based on the most common tropes in fantasy, as seen in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones. Nathan has invited anyone who is interested to come play along, so be sure to check out the first link for more information. Compulsive list-maker that I am, I'm very excited to take part!

This week's tour topic is: Mentor

A tour official who will be at your service until halfway through the tour, when you will unexpectedly lose him.

Ah, I love it when we get "easier" theme weeks. That's when we get to play around with more unconventional lists and I'm always looking forward to what others might put on theirs. Mentors of all shapes and sizes populate the fantasy and sci-fi genres so I'm gonna have some fun.


Midnight Riot/Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Probably one of my favorite mentor figures in an urban fantasy series is Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who's not only one talented detective but a hell of a wizard as well. Head of the Folly and the last officially sanctioned English Wizard, Nightingale takes on the protagonist Peter Grant as his apprentice and subjects him to repetitive magical exercises. Nightingale's a bit of an anachronism, being much older than he looks, and his total fail with modern technology is merely a part of his charm. (Review)

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
Tao is an atypical mentor, being an ancient alien life-form called a Quasing whose race crash-landed on the planet millions of years before the first humans even walked the earth. Incompatible with the atmosphere, Quasings must take a host in order to survive. Now split into two warring factions, the Quasings are at war. That's how our protagonist, the self-doubting, weak-willed, TV-dinner-munching Roen Tan wakes up one day with an alien's voice in his head. Tao must whip out-of-shape Roen for the coming battle, turning him from a loser to a super spy killing machine. (Review)

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
In book two of the Memoirs of Lady Trent series, Natalie is the young woman who shares Isabella's love and fascination with dragons and natural history. Refusing to be married off by her family, Natalie joins the expedition to Eriga against her father's wishes. Isabella makes arrangements to stow Natalie away on the ship, hiding her away until they are safely away from port. On their journey, Natalie becomes Isabella's apprentice of sorts, becoming her companion while also learning research methods. (Review)

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley
Emperor Sanlitun has three children, the oldest being Kaden the heir who has spent the last eight years of his life sequestered in a remote monastery in the mountains, learning the mysteries of the monks who live there. One day, Kaden gets a new mentor in the form of Master Tan, whose teaching methods generally boil down to committing child abuse and torture on his poor royal apprentice, including depriving him of sustenance and beating him bloody almost on a daily basis and pretty much just making Kaden's life a living hell. (Review)

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
The Monstrumologist series is probably the most un-YA young adult series I've ever read - as in, if adapted completely faithfully, a movie based on this novel would get no lower than a resounding R-rating in terms of all the violence, blood and gore. The books are written in the form of a diary by protagonist Will Henry, who recalls his life as a twelve year old orphan taken in by Dr. Pellinore Warthope, a man with a most unusual, gruesome specialty. Will Henry becomes the doctor's indispensable assistant and apprentice in his study and research of monsters. (Review)

Cover Lover - Rivers and Riots

Welcome to Cover Lover, a feature on this blog dedicated to book covers! For a long time, I'd wanted a place where I can share some of my favorite covers, or talk about any that might have caught my eye. So when I came across this idea on fellow gamer/book lover Angelya's site The Oaken Bookcase, I jumped at the opportunity to adopt it as well. The "meme" was originally created by another friend of mine, Jaedia, on her book blog Once Upon A Time, so be sure to check out both their sites and take a look at some of the covers they have featured.

A few weeks ago, I finished a book called Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. A friend had to lend me their copy, because like a few others, I initially had difficulty finding one for myself. It wasn't until later that I realized why -- turns out, the US version of the book goes under the different title of Midnight Riot. Curious as to why, I decided to do some digging around.

And in doing so, I discovered that the two versions also have vastly different covers.

The original Gollancz cover

US cover

I love the original cover. And after reading the novel, I think I prefer it even more. Based upon a detail from a drawing called The Island by UK artist Stephen Walter, the Gollancz cover isn't as bombastic but still manages to capture the quirkiness of the story, and better yet, the liveliness and rich history of a big city like London. It has charm. It's different and unique.

The US cover on the other hand? I'm sorry, but no. I'll give that it's colorful and flashy, but if I'd walked by that on a bookstore shelf I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance. They've pretty much reduced the cover to look like every other convention standard urban fantasy out there! A shame, since the book was so awesome.

Not to mention, the American edition's cover apparently drew a bit of controversy a while back. The publisher Del Rey was criticized for changing an earlier version of the image -- which showed the character's face in more detail -- to the silhouette shown above, thus hiding the book's protagonist Peter Grant's ethnic background as the son of a native London jazz musician and an immigrant mother from Sierra Leone.

Honestly, it seemed like it was a bad idea to change the covers all around. Fortunately, sounds like Del Rey later changed their cover policy to announce that new editions of the book will now have the British cover, and so will the third Peter Grant book Whispers Under Ground and hopefully all future ones in the series as well. Great to hear, since those maps by Stephen Walter really are quite beautiful. Regardless, these are some fascinating stories behind the covers for sure.

Feel free to check out my review of Rivers of London here.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Rivers of London (AKA Midnight Riot in the US) by Ben Aaronovitch

I didn't even get past a quarter of the way through this book before I thought to myself, "Okay, this one is totally going on my 'favorites' shelf." In a word, it was fun. So, so fun. I really can't think of any other book in recent memory that has made me laugh out loud so much.

It definitely helps if you're a fan of the kind of paranormal action-adventures by Jim Butcher or similar authors, but somehow, I think even non-readers of the urban fantasy genre would enjoy this book. First of all, I don't even know if "urban fantasy" would most accurately describe it, as there is also so much of the book that sets it apart and makes it an original and refreshing read.

I suppose it's best to describe Rivers of London as a police procedural mixed with a heavy dose of the supernatural, topped with a dash of dark comedy, mystery and action. The book features Peter Grant, a London Metropolitan Police constable fresh out of probationary hoping to be assigned a decent permanent post, until one day while working on a case he finds himself encountering a ghost. His impromptu interview with the dead witness brings him to the attention of detective Thomas Nightingale, who is also a wizard and the only member of the Met's little-known paranormal investigative unit. Peter becomes Nightingale's apprentice, and soon the two are running all over the city trying to solve a series of murders involving exploding faces.

The book is also almost like a love letter to London. Rich descriptions of the city's history, landmarks and architecture fill its pages, instilling everything with feeling and practically making the setting itself a character all its own. And I haven't even gotten around to talking about all of the rivers in and around London being personified as semi-divine spirits, which I feel is probably one of the most unique and defining concepts in the novel.

As the main protagonist and narrator, Peter Grant pretty much single-handedly made this book amazing for me. I love his dry British wit. I love the unruffled way he approaches weird X-Files moments like ghosts and exploding faces with nothing more than a shrug and a c'est la vie. I love the fact that he is inherently a "good guy" who wants to be a policeman for the right reasons. I love that he tries to approach magic with a scientific mind.

It is that last point about Peter that really resonated with me, because I'd like to think I would react much the same way in his shoes. Also, it is the "science-y" bits in Rivers of London that in my opinion roots the story more to reality than a lot of other books in the genre. That said, sometimes the magic system still has that unfinished, not-entirely-developed feel to it, but I imagine this will be further explored in subsequent novels in the series. Speaking of which, I'm off to find the sequel.

Final verdict:

 

5 of 5 stars