On My Wishlist #19

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope you're all feeling good and not to delicate this morning. :) 2011 looks like a great year for book releases with plenty coming out that I'm really excited about.

This is a meme from Book Chick City. There are so many books out there that I want to read that this is the only way I can keep track! For my first wishlist of 2011 I'm focusing on a London theme...just cos it's a great city that I love living close to!

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

Publisher: UK - Gollancz (January 2010)

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.

This just sounds right up my alley. I love living on the outskirts of London - there is so much here modern and ancient that the idea of magic in the city actually makes more sense than not! I've read the Felix Castor and Matthew Swift series and loved them - hopefully this will add to the wizards in London genre that slowly seems to be emerging...

The Neon Court (Matthew Swift 3) - Kate Griffin

Publisher: Orbit (February 2011)

When the city was founded, he was the mad native spirit that waited in the dark, on the edge of the torchlight. When the streets were cobbled over, he became the footsteps heard on stone that you cannot see. When the Victorians introduced street lighting, he was the shadow who always shied away from the light, and when the gas went out, there he was. The shadow at the end of the alley, the footsteps half-heard in the night.

A daimyo of the Neon Court is dead. So are two warriors of the Tribe. And a freshly-prophesied ‘chosen one’ is missing. Each side blames the other and Matthew Swift is right in the middle of it, trying to keep the peace. Because when magicians go to war, everyone loses. But Swift has even bigger problems. A dead woman is trying to kill him and the city itself is under attack from a force of unimaginable power. As if trying to stay one step ahead of an assassin and juggling magical politics weren’t challenging enough, Swift must also find a way to defeat a primal threat from humanity’s darkest nightmares. Or there may not be a London left to fight over . . .

The first two Matthew Swift books were brilliant - some of my favourite books of all time so I can't wait for the third of the series to come out!

Kraken - China Mieville
Publisher: Pan (November 2010)

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.

A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

One of my book confessions - I've still not managed to read any of China Mieville's books despite the great reviews I've seen and lots of interesting premise for his books! The latest, Kraken set in London so hopefully I'll pick it up at some point!

So that's what I'm starting my wish list for 2011 with - what are you wishing for?