Reading: Rivers of London: Body Work and Rivers of London: Night Witch

[white_hart]

I wanted something entertaining and easy to occupy an afternoon of lying on the sofa feeling grotty (ready to be over this lurgy any time it likes, really), so I decided to download Body Work, the first of the graphic novels linked to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, and read it on my iPad. 45 minutes later, I downloaded the second, Night Witch, and have preordered the third, which isn't due out as a collected volume until May.

Each graphic novel is basically a short piece of casefic; Body Work is set between Broken Homes and Foxglove Summer, and Night Witch comes between Foxglove Summer and The Hanging Tree. They're adjacent to the main canon, rather than advancing the overall plot, although I recognised things in both that were referred to in The Hanging Tree and although Peter doesn't realise it, as readers we are shown a connection between the events of Night Witch and the series arc plot. (One thing that the graphic novel format allows is the opportunity to escape the confines of Peter's first-person narrative and see things from other people's points of view for once, or even scenes where he isn't present.)

I found both easy, fun reads; I think I slightly preferred Body Work, but only because it features Guleed and Stephanopoulos, two of my favourite minor characters, and neither is in Night Witch. I was worried that the format would completely lose Peter's snarky, geeky narrative voice, which is one of my favourite things about the books, but it managed to retain enough of it, and it was interesting to see a visual interpretation of the characters. There are also some entertaining "extras": vignettes of life at the Folly and Peter's notes on various areas of London and magical techniques. Graphic novels aren't my preferred format, but if you enjoyed the novels I'd say these are wortha try, especially if you're feeling under the weather.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Hope that you're feeling a bit brighter today.

[white_hart]

Alas, not really, though I have managed to drag myself into work where I am even more annoyed at the catastrophic systems failures than I might have been if I was feeling well.

[nineveh_uk]

I can see that would be irritating. If you find tomorrow that you're not feeling up to lunch, just let me know and we can reschedule.

[white_hart]

It wasn't actually that bad, because although we couldn't access any of our files I had started writing the reserved minutes of the last Board meeting just before everything went down and was able to carry on with that. (And get them finished, though despite the lack of other distractions they still took pretty much all day.)

I still don't feel brilliant, but I think I feel up to lunch, and am looking forward to seeing you.

[nineveh_uk]

Great, I shall see you later!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't usually do graphic novels or comics (I've got maybe a dozen) but I really like these. I've got them in paperback and am waiting for the third volume rather than buying the comics (though I was mildly tempted when I saw some signed ones in Forbidden Planet last week).

[white_hart]

The comics I've tried before have tended to be TV spin-offs (I have the first couple of the Buffy Season 8 collected volumes, but they've never really grabbed me), and I think that what makes the difference with these is that they do preserve a lot of the tone of the books.

[glittertigger]

Thanks for the review. I may try these!

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Those sound good. I do like the Rivers books.