Ben Aaronovitch

This is miles better than Aaronovitch's last novella set in America and he did two things that really helped sell the setting: he set it in the 1920s and made the narrator British, so any errors can be chalked up to changing times and/or a non-American narrator.

And what a narrator! Augustus Berrycloth-Young sounds like he's stepped out of a Wodehouse story and just makes the entire book sparkle. I hope we get to see more of Gussie and his adventures.

Received via NetGalley.

I've fallen in love with the "Rivers of London" series. I look forward to each new book because I know I will slide into a world of PC Peter Grant and feel happier for being in his company: a mixed-race police constable in the Met, he approaches the world with an insatiable curiosity, a passion for architecture, a commitment to the scientific method, an implacable resistance to the abuse of power, a dry wit that never slides into jaded cynicism and the ability, after much practice and with show more great concentration, to do magic. He is clever, brave, amusing and easy to like.

The Rivers of London series describes how Peter becomes assigned to "The Folly", a once-grand establishment responsible for policing the interaction of the human and the magical, that has declined as magic started to ebb from the world. Peter. the only recruit for a generation, is assigned at a point when magic seems to be increasing and, of course, bad people are plotting to take advantage of it.

"Foxglove Summer", the fifth and latest in the series, delivers many of the things that I enjoyed in its predecessors: witty text, strong police procedure, often described tongue-in-cheek, Peter's obsession with architecture and with applying science to magic, likeable characters - even the ones who have shady allegiances and are not fully or even partly human. It also benefits from the excellent narration by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith who brings the characters in the book alive.

In previous books, London or aspects of her spirit or history, was almost a character in her own right. This book is set in deepest, darkest Herefordshire, a land of farms, forests, cows and dogging. By moving Peter Grant, the quintessential Londoner, from a city that he blends into like a lion on the Savannah, to the country where he doesn't have a clue, Ben Aaronvitch made it easier for me to see Peter and understand who is becoming.

Until "Foxglove Summer", Peter Grant played the role of apprentice, with his boss, The Nightingale, there to advise and support Peter's still-developing powers and guide his sometimes extremely rash judgements. In this book, Peter is at least a journeyman, choosing his own path independently of his mentor. He is also pushed to be more by Beverley Brook, a twenty-something river goddess who has been flirting with him and teasing him since the start of the series.

"Foxglove Summer" resists the Holmes vs Moriarty or Bond vs Spectre dynamic. Instead of Peter Grant pursuing the Faceless Man that he fought at the end of "Broken Homes", he is confronted in "Foxglove Summer" with nothing more or less sinister than a force of nature to whom his fate is largely incidental. The result is a kind of coming of age for Peter that I thought worked very well.

A couple of things in "Foxglove Summer" were less than satisfying: the storyline around the bees seemed to go nowhere, which felt somehow like a broken promise rather than a loose-end in the plot, and the resolution of the story was so focused on Peter that I didn't find out as much as I would have liked about what happened to the sisters.

These are small things that might have made a very good book even better. I'm still in love with this series. I hope it runs for a very long time. show less

I enjoyed this book, so much that I didn't want to review it right away because I was still immersed in Peter Grant's London. It's the urban fantasy take on the detective novel, a police procedural that gives a close-up view of a modern London with undercurrents of magic and magical beings. I love the tone of this book--it's wry and humorous, but doesn't let the humor take over the scene. It's one thing to be ready with a quick line, another entirely to go through one's entire life show more wisecracking, especially in times of great danger. Aaronovitch walks that delicate line like a pro.

Peter is a probationary constable who is about to be shifted into a paperwork division. He and his co-probationary officer and friend are guarding the perimeter of a murder scene when he sees a ghost. Peter is a very likeable hero, wry, intelligent, loyal, aware of class and race issues around him, and while he has family issues that include a heroin-dependent father, he doesn't spend every moment agonizing and reliving the past. We are told he did well in the sciences in school, just not well enough to get him to the next levels. It's magic's gain, as he sets his analytical skills to understanding the magical world, using his free time for experiments. I love those little experiments, because it breaks up the action and makes Peter's experience seem all the more real--who wouldn't be asking a lot of questions if they discover there are magical beings and magic in the world? Many people would be asking the 'hows' and 'whys;' Peter attempts to answer some of the questions himself through the scientific method, to the surprise of his technologically-challenged boss.

There are few wizards left, and I liked that Aaronovitch didn't make magic easy. It takes Peter hours of study and practice to advance, and we get a sense of the effort and thought Peter puts into it. It isn't until a third into the book when he finally raises his own werelight, and we are ready to cheer with him when he does: "Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic." It's a refreshing change from the all-powerful heroes of other books. Similarly, he's aware that even though he has two years on the force, he still makes mistakes, such as when he and Leslie "obtrusively" piled out of the car during surveillance.

Aaronovitch has a real gift for bringing life to his characters, even the most bit parts. Molly doesn't talk at all, and we still get a very good sense of her, her dedication and her potential. Seawoll, an initially scary superior, and Leslie's immediate boss, gets imbued with humanity when Peter watches him question witnesses. We're also given a good look at the subtleties of the police department, when Seawoll "interrogates" Peter after a shooting. "Then we continued lying through our teeth while telling nothing but the truth." It's a perfect tone that conveys so much about the officers' loyalty, the bureaucracy of the department, and the unspoken understanding to follow the letter of the law without coming close to the spirit.

I loved it, and the re-read was even better than the first time through. There are a lot of British-isms, but most of them can be puzzled out from the surrounding sentence(s). A great read, and I'll be looking for a hardcover to add to my own library.

great lines:
"I left in a hurry before he could change his mind, but I want to make it clear that at no point did I break into a skip."

"Number two was a magical library where all the direct treatises on spells, forma and alchemy were kept, all of them written in Latin and so all Greek to me."

Four investigative stars. show less

I’ve had the same complaint about the last couple Rivers of London novels. They’ve felt padded by world-building and humour, and have generally felt meandering and rushed to press, without the clean lines of plot I like in the earlier books. This novel is not like that. It’s a return to form, with no spare words and world-building and plot that feed off each other beautifully. Even Peter’s narration feels stronger, somehow.

I love how Aaronovitch shows time passing and the Folly’s show more growing integration with the greater Met without walking us through all the stages, and I liked that he didn’t steer clear of the consequences of tracking down a terrible, terrible dude either. And the foreshadowing! The sense of “well, this is obviously coming back later, but how?” that kept me turning pages and trying to work out where the story was going and catch every little bit of British folkloric trivia that turns up, and then of course there were things I still missed even though I thought I was paying attention. And there are some gloriously epic bits like we’ve never seen before in the series, and Peter being his affable, distractable self but also have grown as an officer, and the bits with Abigail…

Anyway. *coughs* Short novel but good novel, and obviously I liked it quite a bit. It’s definitely a turning point in the series too, so I’m very interested in where things might go from here. Also, it was over too soon, but they always are, in this series.

I can’t rec Lies Sleeping to newcomers, though. You’re going to miss so much and get spoiled on so much if you don’t start from the beginning of the series. Fans, though? Fans should definitely read this one. The only reason I’m not rating it higher is because I’ve read some seriously good stuff since then, better than this even, and I refuse to go to 10/10 this early in the year.

7/10

To bear in mind: Contains non-physical torture, descriptions of historical murders, gaslighting directed at the main character, white supremacists, aspersions on Tolkien, and bullets wounds, slavery, murder, and falling from high places. show less