This is the first work I've read in this world, but I am still able to enjoy it without any lack of understanding. This was an quick and enjoyable read in the supernatural detective genre, which is something that is incredibly up my alley. I recommend it if you like that type of read.

This was a great installment in the Rivers of London series, and I love how it expands the story to another country. The main character is a German investigator, Tobias Winter. A man is found in a vineyard, covered in mold, and Tobias is sent to investigate. Of course, magic is involved. There is some good humor, and I liked how the investigation progressed. It felt longer than a novella, just because the story wasn't too simplistic, and the characters were well drawn.
I'd like to thank netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a novella in the same universe as the Rivers of London series, but not with the same protagonist. The main character, narrator, supernatural police officer, and human being much put-upon by rivers in this go-round is Tobias Winter, not Peter Grant.

…frankly they are not very different. And Aaronovitch made some allusions that made me think he might be aiming at doing something thematically interesting with the not-very-different-ness? but this is not it. This is another of the same thing. If this is the sort of thing you like, gosh, you might well like this sort of thing. If you were thinking perhaps not having Peter Grant as a protag would mean Aaronovitch had branched out a bit…no. It does not mean that.

The wine of the Mosel Valley is nice to think about, though, and it rattles along entertainingly. It is very definitely a series installment that does what the series does, but removed from the need to handle the recurring issues of the recurring characters.

I posted the following review to Dear Author.on May 31st:

https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-plus-reviews/review-the-october-man-by-ben-aaronovitch/

An old coworker of mine recommended this author to me a few years back and I never got around to reading anything by him, so when I saw a novella was available to read from NetGalley, I decided to take the plunge! And I'm glad I did!

While not a standalone, this is a really good piece for a beginner to join in at. There's plenty of explanation about the rules of this world and how the magic system works, but not too much that the story doesn't flow alone.
I love the feel of this story, I don't think I've ever read a police procedure/urban fantasy before and now I know what I've been missing!
The story begins with a man dead due to a wine-making fungus and only gets weirder from there. Who could use that as a weapon and why? What do the rivers have to do with it? Why the wine?

Warnings include fantastical murders, probably on par with NCIS, maybe a bit more intense, and description of attempted rape of a minor.

I received a free ecopy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have read all the Peter Grant books by Ben Aaronovitch. It is that world set in Germany. The book introduces Tobias Winter a magic practitioner. The case is a murder by fungal rot on the grapes of a winery. A century old feud is awakened by a group of middle-aged men who form a drinking club.
He is partnered with local police, Vanessa Sommer. They investigate the supernatural death. Several more follow. We are introduced to the German version of the magic police patterned after the English Folly.
We meet more rivers which a bonus. The writing was fresh and well done.
I really enjoyed it but felt you needed to have read some of the other books to really know what was going on. I would have enjoyed more backstory. But this is a short story.
I am looking forward to the more in this series.
.

I liked this book well enough, but it doesn’t quite have the same magic (heh) of the Rivers of London books featuring Peter Grant.

Not that magic isn’t practiced by the book’s narrator, Tobias Winter, who is Peter’s counterpart in Germany. He gets the chance to use his skills when a dead man covered in a fungus used in wine production is found in a vineyard outside the city of Trier. Tobias’s investigation involves a lot of the same techniques used by Peter, including analyzing vestigia and interacting with the supernatural population, like the local rivers.

For me, though, The October Man wasn’t quite as gripping at the main books in the series. Partially I think it’s because Tobias isn’t as interesting a character as Peter, and I found him just a bit bland. The humor isn’t as pronounced in this book, either. It has its moments; for example, Aaronovitch can’t resist giving Tobias a local police liaison named Sommer. (Sommer and Winter, get it?) But overall the tone is a bit subdued.

Still, if you are a Rivers of London fan and are looking for something to read before the next book about Peter (coming in November 2019!), I’d go ahead and grab a copy.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

Fans of Peter Grant and the Rivers of London series will be thrilled with The October Man. Hopefully this is the start of another, parallel series. Tobias Winter is a member of the German police department that deals with magic-related crimes. He has a wonderfully snarky, irreverent attitude towards life and his job. Tobi flings wisdom and zingers with equal panache. He and Peter Grant are truly peas in a pod, even though they've never met. I'm hoping for future magical cases that require their meeting and combining skills, though Tobias by himself is most entertaining and satisfying.

I can’t help but go all fangirl here, as Aaronovich expands occult London into occult Europe with this new magical adventure in Germany. I truly love the Rivers of London books and the occult world being uncovered—oops, I mean being built here (wink,wink). We’re getting the stage set for “Men in Black International”, only with magical beings and deities instead of aliens, and the possibilities are endless and exciting.

Our hero, Tobias Winter, works for Abteilung KDA - the Department for Complex and Unspecific Matters, Germany’s version of London’s Folly, and he sounds a bit like his counterpart Peter Grant, from London. Cops and criminals think alike, no matter what country they’re in, no matter if they’re human or “other”.

“This is a tale about the Queen of the Harvest, the October Man, and the little-known time the vineyard around Trier started to eat people....” and you need to read it. Fans will not be disappointed.
(Thanks to Subterranean Press and Netgalley for the e-galley to review.)

Ever wondered what supernatural policing is like in other European countries in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London world? If so, this is the novella for you. If not, well, why the hell not? (Though you can't be a faulted for loving Aaronovitch's England and thinking that it's got quite enough going on to bother mucking about with other places too, thank you very much.)

On the one hand, it seems a bit like Aaronovitch either visited and felt inspired by the Mosel Valley and/or had a great idea for a case involving wine and wineries, but couldn't very well set it in London because that's not exactly a place known for its wine. On the other, Aaronovitch could have simply made a larger decision to expand the series' world because there are more stories to tell outside of his original scope, especially now that Peter Grant's initial arc seems to be coming to a natural close. Either way, this novella smartly picks up a German thread found in the other books, and sets it in Trier with a whole new set of characters.

The October Man is the story of copper and apprentice wizard Tobias Winter, a sort of German counterpart to Peter, though Tobias seems to have been in training for less time, or else seems to take protocol more seriously... or else just doesn't use spells as much as Peter does. (Apart from questions of individual character or experience, it's really interesting to see how the German side of things has evolved vis-a-vis the long-ago events of WWII, previously discussed only from the British perspective.)

As someone who has visited the Mosel Wine Region (and many other wine regions!) I enjoyed the case very much. What Tobias Winter and the others uncover is great, and their outreach to the local rivers is a lot of fun. So are the occasional call-backs to the London stories.

My only real reproach is that the voice sounded too much like Peter. As much as Aaronovitch tries to establish Tobias as a different character, the combination of the similar narrative voice, the story structure, the side characters, and the storyworld all hewing so very closely to the "parent" series makes it necessary that at least one of those things should be different enough that you won't forget this isn't a Peter Grant story. It strikes me that the POV voice should be the easiest thing to change, among those factors, since the details of Tobias' life are so very different. Changing only the setting doesn't seem to be enough. Maybe it's just the nature of the magic crime genre corner that Aaronovitch has backed himself into. It's a great corner; I will keeping reading this stuff as long as he keeps writing it. But it's a corner nonetheless..

4.5 Stars bumped to 5 Stars "because reasons"

The Rivers of London has become one of my favorite urban fantasy series. With its unique combination of characters, protagonist Peter Grant's casual obsession with the deficiencies of modern architecture, the whole what if Aurors were real and Harry Potter grew up and became a magical detective inspector vibe, the series gripped me from the first book. Aaronovitch has taken a sidestep in this novella however and Peter Grant is a distant character in London, an apprentice wizard admired by German apprentice wizard Tobias Winter. When Winter and police liaison to the supernatural unit Vanessa Sommer (yes, Sommer and Winter!) start investigating a series of murders in Trier, near the rivers Mosel (Moselles) and Kyll, we learn a number of different things about genus loci from Morgane and Kelly, goddesses of the two rivers. Some of this information is interesting to long time readers of the principal series who have been wondering about Peter Grant and his river goddess girlfriend, Bev. While this novella doesn't give any of their situation away, it does raise some mighty interesting possibilities. And we also find out the interesting tidbit that the goddess of the Kyll once sheltered Thomas Nightingale for three days during wartime. Oh, and it's now official that Nightingale's newest apprentice is "absolutely terrifying."

While I enjoyed Tobias less than Peter (he lacks a lot of Peter's panache, interesting family history, and laser rangefinder), Tobias does hold my interest and I'd like his rosemary lamb recipe. Vanessa is also interesting, though she's not my much-loved Guleed. And I want way, way more of die Hex aus dem Osten, the woman called Witch of the East, and Nightingale's German counterpart.

This novella opens some interesting possibilities as to the direction that the Rivers series is headed as the magical swell in London is also spilling over in Europe. (Brexit be damned!)

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from Subterranean Press in exchange for an honest review. P

(Please note that the Orion/Gollancz edition of this novella publishes two weeks after the special hardcover edition from Subterranean Press.)

A nice in between story in this series that opens up the world a bit more. We have had references to the German magicians before so it was nice to get a story from their viewpoint for a change. I definitely still want Peter Grant as the main character, but I do hope we get more adventures with Tobias and Vanessa!

I adore Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series. This long novella was a fun read but feels like it's a set up for another series. The October Man is set mostly in Germany and I, for one, missed the London setting. It's an okay read for fans but I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't read the first 7 books.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Rivers of the Continent! Aaronovitch takes us to Germany where the law enforcement magicians are beginning to reawaken after long years of enforced inactivity. Magic, of course, has always been happening, and the nascent department is becoming more active.

While a large part of the, er, magic of Rivers of London is the fabulous narration of Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who *is* Peter Grant for me, it was fun to branch off to Germany and meet another novice practitioner, Tobias Winter, and his non-magical partner Vanessa Sommer. Hints are dropped as well that magic is happening in France. Bring it on!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This novella feels a bit like a piece of fan fic from the Rivers world. Intriguing. Could lead to a split story set in Germany, with the world building the same but different characters and setting

This is a great entry in the Rivers of London world. It was fun to see what it's like to deal with magic in a different setting- the little barbed jokes from Germany against London were pretty funny. Also, were all the werewolves nazis? That seems rather ignoble of them. Anyway, I like this a lot, although the main narrator is very similar in tone and feel to Peter Grant.

This book is part of the series but you can read it alone too. You will understand the story and find it intriguing, mysterious and fun at times. There is more suspense than romance there so for those who love that kind of book. It is perfect.

This isn’t a perfect book (my biggest gripe is that Tobias Winter felt too similar to Peter in voice and action, which is a comment I’ve seen made in other early reviews) but I rounded up because I was thoroughly entertained all the way through and am now (im)patiently waiting for the next book set in this universe.

There's a new book in the Peter Grant series!

Only it's not about Peter Grant. Which is only fair. He just wrapped up a 7-book arc against his greatest foe, he deserves a break, and evil magic exists outside the bounds of Great Britain, after all.

Specifically, in the small town of Trier in the Mosel wine region of Germany. A man has been found dead, covered in a gray fungus which usually infects grapes. Bring in one of Germany's only official magic practioners, Tobias Winter, who teams up with the local law enforcement to solve the mystery partially through magical means but mostly through good old-fashioned police work. There's a winery owner, a local wine-loving group, a decades-only crime, a sentient river or two, and more dead bodies to come.

As a standalone, I found it to be a lot of fun to get a look at Aaronovitch's world outside of the only protagonist we've seen thus far. Winter and his boss are certainly aware of Peter Grant and the Nightingale and this longish novella sets up the expansion of their world nicely. I will say that I think Tobias' voice was a little too similar to Grant's edven if his tastes and habits were different, but not so much I didn't enjoy the book.

"The October Man" was a fine snack while I wait for more novels.

Entertaining murder mystery slash urban fantasy set in Germany. Although it's a part of a much longer series, this is a complete standalone that was accessible even to me, somebody who's not read the other books. There were a couple of references lost on me, but nothing that impeded my enjoyment of the book.

The plot was interesting, the characters entertaining, but I found the prose a bit too dry for my taste. This is very much a police procedural, so if that's something you're into, this will scratch that itch. I found it too detached and clinical to truly savour the book, but the brief bursts of humour from the characters would ease my reading.

Although I don't rank this book highly, it did pique my interest enough that I want to read other books from this series, so it succeeded on that front at the very least.