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"Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge? The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all." This series does what most urban fantasies avoid¹ - it seamlessly integrates the 'urban' and the 'fantastical' parts, creating a lovely well-crafted enjoyable reading experience that remains grounded in reality, with just the right touch of whimsy to keep it moving along, *nothing to see here*. (Don't you just loooove my pathetic attempts at police humor?
My review of the storyThoughts for the audio version narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith:Brilliant. There's nothing more I can say. I wanted to sit and binge-listen, but was afraid my muscles would atrophy during the hours it would take to listen at normal speed. In the third book, Leslie's voice is more intelligible, presumably the result of her surgeries. Voicing of Zach the half-fae had me laughing. Thanks to Dr. Walid, I'm pretty sure I could do a Scottish brogue if I tried. The voicing of the...
I'm really enjoying this series and it really shouldn't come as a surprise as they're a geek's dream come true; at times it feels like there are more geek culture references than there is plot.These books are also really funny, which took me slightly by surprise as nobody had mentioned they were funny in all the various reviews I read before starting the series. I think they'd really appeal to fans of Douglas Adams, Tom Holt or Terry Pratchett.To be honest, I keep almost giving them a five star
I do not know how, but I always end up giving a Peter Grant novel 4 stars although I am not usually satisfied with the plot construction. I guess it is the humour which is right up my alley, the characters which are diverse and interesting and last but not least, London as a setting. This time the setting is the London Underground and the London Sewers. It involves some magical pottery, an art gallery, some strange underground dwellers and a lot of shit (literally). The first "touristic attracti...
Re-read 8/29/21:Amusing to see the team up with the Americans once again. Totally fascinating art world, too.Original Review:I've mentioned how these books go down as smooth as jazz, and there's a lot of honesty in it, although the jazz bits are downplayed almost entirely in this book in favor of a little traditional artistic murder.Not that art is being murdered, though that certainly might be the case, or that the artists might be doing the murdering, which also might be the case, or that the
3.5ish stars.Another solid entry in a very enjoyable UF series. It's always a pleasure to spend some time with Peter Grant and company. Some things I particularly like about this book:- Leslie is back! And I love that her... condition... really isn't a huge deal. It wasn't used to turn her into a tragic victim, but it also wasn't glossed over and essentially "fixed" overnight. Cool to see her growing as a practitioner as well.- There are always several great new characters with each installment,...
“This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I've never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.”So, finished the third instalment in the Rivers of London, an urban fantasy series that is cracking up to be the owner of some of the most memorable characters and to be consistently entertaining and intriguing and humorous.Again, the Audible narration from Kobna Holdbrook-Smith was fantastic. He brought to li...
The train kept a rollin’.And by that I mean the binge reading of Ben Aaronovitch’s PETERGRANTAPALOOZA!Aaronovitch’s 2012 entry into the smoothest UF series since EVER, and the third in the series, may be the best one yet. It’s like if Ben and Neil Gaiman and Tana French sat down over a pint or three and hammered out what is best in life, and no Cohen it’s not “to crush enemy, see him driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the vemen” – it’s to know that this book is only one in a series...
Imagine: You’re in the underground tunnel. You hear whispers. There is somebody lurking in the shadows...The creature gets nearer and nearer and at last you hear….Hello. It’s me :) just me...That’s the way I feel about this book. The places were so proper and so awesome almost all the way through the book, but I lacked something gripping, suspenseful or more spooky. I longed for more magic.We have a spooky underground even with and strange and some kind of dangerous people, silently lurking in t...
Somebody’s murdered - whodunit? Doesn’t sound like much of a story does it? It’s not. Honestly, I was gobsmacked that Ben Aaronovitch got a 400+ page novel out of something so insubstantial. Nothing. Happens. For hundreds of pages! This is how you write like a hack professionally, guys. The narrative is rambling, unfocused, horribly overlong and utterly boring. A vague and unmemorable murder happens near the start and then for practically every scene after I kept wondering what relevance they ha...