I would say absolutely, yes. When Peter and Nightingale travel out of the city to the source of the Thames, it's pretty much treated as simply "not-London" compared to the level of description elsewhere in the story. It's such a dramatic difference that it's like the author moved from describing what's there (in London) in loving detail to describing a dream (of rural idyll) imagined in his head. Plus, the story as a whole is so completely British that even I, as an ardent Anglophile who's spent time living in Britain, had trouble following some of the many, many casual references to pop culture, London lore, and Britspeak. Yeah, there are references to elsewhere, but only in the context of things that are part of everyday life in multicultural, cosmopolitan London. I'm not saying its a bad thing (though it might put off non-British readers), but it seems like a perfect example of Creator Provincialism to me.
Edited by 216.99.32.44
Is the series really called "Rivers of London" as a whole? I know the River local gods are pretty important to the plot but they are side characters, in the second book especially. I got the impression from the website that Aaronovitch used "The Folly" as the series name? I'm not sure.
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He hasn't officially named the series yet (at one point it was "The Last Apprentice Wizard" and there is some concept art floating around to that effect, but that was ditched in advance of publication), so we're just going with the name of the first book of the series as the series name. He's used the phrase "next Rivers book" in his twitter feed a couple of times if that helps. The Folly is the name of the part of his author-website that is about these works.
Is this really an example of Creator Provincialism, both the author and his main character are intensely partisan towards London but they don't seem ignorant of the rest of the world. Despite being set in London the book makes frequent references to everywhere from Sierra Leone to Hollywood and India.
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