Rivers of London

Last night I finished reading the book Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. It's a blend of urban fantasy and police thriller. Police Constable Peter Grant is a rookie cop in London who is ordered to guard a headless corpse and finds himself taking a witness statement from a ghost. He is soon introduced to the secret side of Old London Town: a city of magic, vampires, ghosts and gods. As the headless corpse turns out to be just the first in a series of vicious, unexplained acts of violence sweeping the city, Peter learns that an old force has awakened, at the same time he finds himself embroiled in a feud between the two gods of the River Thames. It's a hugely entertaining novel. I reviewed it here: http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/rivers-of-london-by-ben-aaronovitch.html

I'm looking forward to seeing the new series of Black Mirror on Netflix tonight.

Spirited Away

I went out to the Filmhouse cinema this afternoon and saw Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It tells the story of ten year old Chihiro who finds herself trapped in a magical fantasy world when her parents are changed into pigs. It's a brilliant film and one of the classics of animation. It was the highest grossing film in Japan when it was released, and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

 

This evening I went to the Book Festival and saw Ben Aaronovitch, who has written comics, urban fantasy novels and scripts for Doctor Who (he wrote the "Remembrance of the Daleks" which I would say is one of the best older Doctor Who stories). It was basically an hour long Question and Answer session, and Aaronovitch gave some really good writing advice and was very funny. After the show I bought his book Rivers of London and got it signed.