UK & US Cover Art for 'Moon over Soho' (Ben Aaronovitch)

I really enjoyed ‘Rivers of London’ (or ‘Midnight Riot’, whatever you want to call it) so when my copy of ‘Moon over Soho’ arrived the other day it went straight to the top of the reading pile and you can expect to see a review on the blog probably at the back end of next week.

My first glimpse of the cover (I’ve got the US edition which is due in March, the UK edition won’t be available until towards the end of April) had me thinking about all the chatter over the different titles for the first book and its accompanying artwork. The UK cover won out on both counts that time and I thought it could be cool to see what surprises ‘Moon over Soho’ will throw our way.

The big surprise (if you could call it that) is that both books have the same title this time round. It’s not really a surprise at all to see that both editions are sticking with the same art style that they did last time round.

Here’s the US cover,

And here’s the UK cover,

Del Rey are going for the ‘Peter Grant is going to **** you up, with magic!’ approach on their cover while Gollancz are looking to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that London itself is magical in its own right. It’s the UK cover for me again, what do you think?

Here’s the blurb for ‘Moon over Soho’, it might just be a little bit spoilery so be warned...

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first. No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help: there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives. And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.

Like I said, look out for a review next week sometime.