The urban fantasy book I needed a palate cleanser before reading was Broken Homes, the next book in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. It won’t be out in the U.S. until February 2014, but I bought a U.K. edition.
Plot is not the strong point of these, but this one’s seemed a little shaggier to me than usual—slower to develop, only loosely fitting into the shape of the book, and maybe relying a bit much on Peter being an idiot. However, there’s good stuff with the Rivers, and further developments that support my thesis that the long game of the series is magic coming back and coming out, and Peter is always fun to spend time with.
All that said, on the whole I find myself extremely apprehensive over the direction of the series, to the point where I think I will have Chad read the next one first and tell me if I should read it. Fortunately for the rest of you, this reaction is fairly personal, more about my emotional attachments than an objective assessment of quality. Unfortunately for the rest of you, you’ll have to read the book to know what I’m talking about, because there’s really nothing else I can say about it here. Sorry.