Graphic Novel Review – Rivers of London: Night Witch

Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Thanks for joining me today for this review of the second graphic novel in the Rivers of London series, Night Witch. You can find my review of the first Rivers of London graphic novel, Body Work, here.

Synopsis
RUSSIAN TO DISASTER

The daughter of a powerful Russian oligarch has vanished from her home, apparently taken by a mythical forest creature fresh out of Russian legend. To ‘encourage’ Peter’s cooperation in finding the missing child, his boss Nightingale is kidnapped — and Peter finds himself caught in a tangled web of intrigue where nothing is as it seems!

Story Review
Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina. The Russian Night Witch is first introduced in Whispers Under Ground and is mentioned from time to time after. She is one of my favourite non-centeral characters, and so I was really excited to see more of her in this graphic novel.

As always, the story was absolutely on point. This time I felt it did rely more heavily on knowing the background to the characters and the magic system, whereas Body Works had been almost fully independant. This didn’t take away from my enjoyment of it, as I’ve loved all the books right up to now, but is something to be aware of if you’re easing into the series.

Varvara, Nightingale, Peter, Leslie and Beverly all play key roles within this storyline, and I was curious to see what they had planned as it progressed. I’m still curious! Although these books work alongside the main storyline, there is still a relative amount of freedom, and it is this freedom that I feel they really made the most of here. What transpired gave answers to some questions that we might have had about the wilder world, but also posed new ones too, keeping the scales cleverly balanced.

The full plot was well rounded, clever, and exciting, being easy to read yet completely absorbing at the same time, a skill that Aaronovitch has perfected over the years.

Artwork Review
As with Body Works, the artists here have aimed for a largely realistic approach with what they’ve created. It works well to compliment the storyline, and with the larger Rivers of London world too, as we are supposed to believe in this being plausible in our world.

One of the things I really appreicated was the way magic was depicted to work, both visually and with sound effects. This is one of the things I’m finding I really enjoy about graphic novels, and I especially enjoyed seeing Nightingale in action – again!

Thanks for stopping by for this graphic novel review. I’m still making my way through the Rivers of London books and can’t wait for the release of the next one coming up soon.