The Rivers of London graphic novels are a tricky proposition - they were all designed to slot in between the events of the book series, but they aren't meant to advance the main story at all. So their role is basically to tell fun little side adventures or add more depth and background to the characters, without adding so much that people who only read the novels feel confused when stuff from the graphic novels is mentioned in the main story. Each of them only covers a single volume, so they can't go into a lot of detail and have to remain quite focused.

The graphic novels have had mixed success at achieving their aims. Some of them are wonderful and rich and engaging, some of them are pretty dull. Some of them have introduced important characters which have been slotted into the main story in confusing ways. They mostly improve as they go on. Water Weed is the sixth volume to come out and the style is much more assured than the early volumes. In the first few, it felt like there was an awkward mismatch between the medium and the storytelling style. This may have been because they are a collaboration between Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch, rather than being written exclusively by Aaronovitch like the novels are. They are missing some of his trademark wit and the amazing bits of cultural and scientific knowledge he always drops into his storytelling.

Water Weed has a much firmer hand on the reins, and it threads the needle pretty well. It doesn't tell us much that's new or give us any special insight into the characters like the wonderful Detective Stories does, but it tells an engaging little side story. I think a lot of its success is down to it focusing on a single case and its investigation, without any fluff. Rivers of London always seems to be at its best when Peter is following a specific case, and all the bits of police procedure are laid out. This one starts out with a mysterious bag of weed which seems to be magical, and it has fun new characters, red herrings, some magical action, and a few twists and turns that make it quite an entertaining ride. The villain of the story is great; hopefully she will turn up in future volumes.

Another fun addition to the graphic novel canon!

Things I enjoyed:
-Well plotted, creepy, interesting story.
-the "tales from the folly" one-pagers are always delightful little bits - the one where Peter thinks he's snuck out of extra work to watch the rugby only to see that nightingale had tickets and was in the crowd was a good lol

Things I enjoyed less:
-I will admit it is occasionally very weird to jump to the stylized pinup poses that the comic occasionally adopts for dramatic effect, like, is this totally necessary? probably not

I'm feeling fuzzy and full of cold and not up to reading anything serious, so I thought I'd check if the latest collected volume of the Rivers of London graphic novels was available yet, and on discovering that it was, downloaded the kindle version as the ideal undemanding Sunday afternoon read.

Water Weed sees Peter and Nightingale invstigating drug dealing along the Thames after Peter experiences powerful vestigia from a batch of weed "confiscated" by Beverly Brook's young sisters Chelsea and Olympia. I thought the plot of this one was thin even by the standards of the graphic novel series, which does tend towards very lightweight casefic, and the supernatural connection was so minimal I couldn't quite see why Peter and Nightingale would be taking on the investigation instead of passing it over to another branch of the Met. I also didn't like the way the artwork presented female characters, which definitely crossed the line for me from "sexualised" to "objectified" (I don't like the first but definitely object to the second). Not my favourite of the series, and makes me wonder if the graphic novel element of the series is running out of steam.

These graphic novels in Rivers of London universe are still really good. Short, little cases with familiar characters is such a good concept ^_^

Much better than the last one, good story, funny, I like it!