I’m starting a new tradition on this blog.
I read a lot of genre fiction. I’ve been trying to limit myself to a book a week recently, because if I don’t I tend to rack up hundreds of dollars a month in payments to the Kindle e-book store, which I buy from because I’ve run out of room on every shelf in my house and I’ve read everything in the sci-fi and fantasy section in the local library. In optimal conditions I can burn through your average genre novel in less than a day. When I say I read “a lot,” that’s the scale of the problem I’m talking about.
Most of the time when I finish a book I feel a sense of satisfaction, think about the plot for a bit until it’s all nice and tidy in my mind, and then move on with whatever else is going on in my life. Sometimes, though, a book grabs me by something deep inside, and doesn’t let go. I think about the plot, turning events this way and that in my head, trying to see the motivations for the characters in each scene and the subtext that sets up a twist later on. When a story has really gotten its hooks into me I daydream my way into the world, setting myself up in my mind as a wizard or rogue agent or whatever and interfering in the plot. I write rants that I want to deliver to the characters, or questions that I want to ask them, and barely restrain myself from writing terrible self-insert fanfics.
When I find a book like that, one that becomes part of my personal pantheon of literature, I always want to talk about it afterward. I rarely can because I’m usually reading stuff that no one else I know has read, and if they have it wasn’t recently and they don’t remember the details. So when I was seized by that desire yet again and was trying to think of where I could talk at length about books that I’d read and really enjoyed, it occurred to me that I have a blog, and what else are blogs for if not pointless pontificating?
For my inaugural “What’s Adam Reading?” post I’d like to talk about the series that inspired me to write it. It’s called either Rivers of London or PC Peter Grant depending on whether you go by what most people seem to call them or what Amazon’s listings say, and it’s absolutely fantastic. I read all six novels, three comic anthologies, and a novella over the course of the past month or so, and I’m dying to talk about them.
This post will attempt to be as spoiler-free as possible, with me talking about spoilers in hidden sections throughout (click on a spoiler box to expand the text inside of it). If you haven’t read the series (and I mean the entire series, because I will be mentioning how particular books tie into later novels), don’t read the spoilers, because these books have some seriously major ones.
Overall Summary
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch is an urban fantasy police procedural series with a fantastic sense of place, a lovely dry noir-snark narration style, and an occasional sidestep into bloody madness and violence. It’s always a pleasure when I read a book and realize that I couldn’t have possibly written it myself, and Rivers of London is definitely in that category thanks to the sheer amount of detail that Aaronovitch puts into his magic-infused city. It’s patently obvious that the man lives and breathes London. Each book in the series contains sections describing the history of some narrow corner of the city, how it came to be the way it is today and what weird little eccentricities it has that don’t get covered on Wikipedia. In one book there’s an author’s note at the back mentioning that he added a building to the skyline in a specific spot between two other buildings, and in another he apologizes for having the wrong show playing on a TV in a specific scene. The attention to detail is like none other. You basically need a map of the city and a book on British folklore sitting beside you as you read, it’s that good. He also has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of British police procedures, and explains all the complicated bits in a way that ends up being fascinating instead of deadly dull.
As if that weren’t enough, the characters are delightfully well-developed. Constable Peter Grant, the main protagonist, is an excellent narrator, witty and curious and not prone to angsting unnecessarily about things until his friends point out that bottling his emotions in like that isn’t really healthy. There’s a lot of really solid subtext going on behind his narration that lets you pick up on his emotional state, but he never comes out and says that he’s specifically feeling anything, which is such a refreshing way to use a first-person narrator. A lot of authors I’ve found use first person as an excuse to monologue about the character’s emotional state, because when you’re looking out from behind a character’s eyes you can dig into their head as far as you want to go. You won’t find any of that here, for the most part. Pay attention to Peter’s unconscious physical reactions to events, and before long you’ll find that you can read him like you’d read someone that you knew very well in real life. It feels like you’re making a new friend instead of reading about a character in a book.
Quick summary of the series plot before we get into the individual books: A freshly-minted copper from the London Metropolitan Police gets inducted into an ancient and secret order of wizards and slowly sets about turning them into a proper magical police department. Along the way there’s love, murder, betrayal, conspiracy, science, magic, and a lot of acronyms.
Pay attention to the details with this one. That’s where the real story gets told.
Midnight Riot
Usually I don’t appreciate the practice of publishers renaming British books for the American release. It’s confusing and I usually wind up disagreeing with the decision (especially egregious in the case of one of my favorite fantasy novels, Daniel Polansky’s Low Town, which was called The Straight-Razor Cure in the British release, a title that is so absolutely better than what they went with that I can’t even begin to understand what they were thinking). In this case, however, I think changing the name of the book from Rivers of London to Midnight Riot wasn’t a bad move, because Rivers of London doesn’t really tell you much about the book while Midnight Riot is a lot more evocative. I like Rivers of London as the series name, but to really kick things off good an proper let’s go with the riot.
The book opens with PC Peter Grant of the Metropolitan Police interviewing a ghost about a murder that just occurred. Since ghosts aren’t allowed to be witnesses in a modern courtroom, he goes off seeking more substantial evidence, and is subsequently inducted into the Folly, Britain’s very small magical crimes division. Most of the characters who will be main players in the rest of the series are introduced here–the senior cops Stephanopoulos and Seawoll, Constable Lesley May (spelled “Leslie” in my version of this book, and then Lesley in every one thereafter, for some reason), the unnervingly cheerful Doctor Walid, Molly the inhuman maid, and of course Thomas Nightingale, the gentleman wizard with a whole lot more in his past than most other people have. Something’s causing mayhem and murder about London town, and this pack of police has to figure out how to stop it.
It’s a good, solid read, and a great introduction to the characters. Some parts of it are a little rough, I thought, but further explanation and explorations of the different themes and characters in later books really manage to patch over any holes this one might have. Everything comes back around, and everything has consequences that are carried over to the rest of the series, even the little things that you wouldn’t expect to get picked up again.
By itself, it’s a really good book. But I probably wouldn’t be here writing about it if this were the only one in the series that I’d read. If you pick this up and decide you like the narration style and the sort of whimsical and bloody magical world that it presents, then I highly encourage you to invest some time in the rest of the series, because it only gets better.
Midnight Riot Spoilers
Here we have the first instance of Lesley being a traitor. It’s really interesting to go back through the book and see all the instances of Henry Pyke/Mr. Punch not knowing police procedure or otherwise messing up in their possession of Constable May, and all the points where she was told important information about the case that allowed the villains to keep themselves one step ahead. This is a really well-constructed book, and I have to imagine that the author had some pretty extensive notes keeping track of who knew what facts at any given time so that he could make it all work.
Also, holy fuck, the thing with the baby. That’s the moment where this story tells you that despite the dryly humorous narration this isn’t really a comedy. That entire scene was just horrific.
And dammit all, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Lesley, the poor woman. Just through the police academy, first real assignment, and her face gets absolutely destroyed by foul magic. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s hard to say that that excuses what she does about it in the later books.
Moon Over Soho
In the second book those little character details that were developed in book one get put to good use, as a large portion of the plot focuses on the London jazz scene, which Peter’s father is heavily involved in. Psychic jazz music is rising from a corpse that showed up in Doctor Walid’s morgue, and Peter would like to know why. In a seemingly unrelated case that he’s been called in to consult on as the resident expert in freaky stuff, someone is going around biting people’s dicks off with a vagina dentata. Bloody murder and other kinds of murder are being committed in the old city, and our heroes had best catch the perpetrators before they claim any more victims.
Also, Peter’s dad is resurrecting his jazz career and has quit his heroin habit. Good for him. He seems like a pretty cool dude.
On a non-plot-related note, in my copy of this book the character Leslie’s name changes to Lesley, which it remains for the rest of the series. Also, Stephanopoulos’ name changes to Stephanopolis (consistently, it’s not just a one-off typo), and then changes back for the rest of the series. This probably doesn’t have any significance, but I figured I’d note it so you’d know you weren’t going insane if you decide to pick up the US Amazon Kindle copies and notice that yourself.
Moon Over Soho Spoilers
Say hello to the Faceless Man, everybody. Ain’t he a crafty little fucker?
This is where we get the basic backstory behind the criminals known as the Faceless Men (or Albert Woodville-Gentle and Martin Chorley) that will be further teased out and explained over the course of the following books. It’s also where we see the first hints of disagreement between Peter and Nightingale over the way the Folly should be run, when they have that little argument about whether they should apprehend and try to rehabilitate the sisters or burn them like the Folly does all vampires. Personally, I really liked Peter’s idea, and felt that he was 100% in the right–if they could establish a way to experiment with the sisters, and figure out how they got to be the way they are and let them live without accidentally murdering people constantly, then they could maybe find a way to save or otherwise help people who become vampires. I’m somewhat disappointed that the choice was taken away from Peter and Thomas by the sisters committing suicide, but I also can’t say I don’t understand why the girls decided to do so. Discovering that you’ve been accidentally causing the deaths of every man you’ve loved for the past sixty, seventy years…that’s not going to go over well.
Incidentally, this first fight between the Faceless Man and Peter is the only one where Martin isn’t holding back due to his agreement with Lesley, and is also the fight where Peter does the best against him. I’m honestly not sure what to make of that, but that’s how it played out. Maybe Martin went to the sorcery gym and bulked out a bit after being forced to run from an unexpectedly magic police constable.
Whispers Underground
An American has been murdered in London, and everyone from the FBI to the boy’s New York state senator father is dropping in to demand answers. Stephanopoulos decides that the case smells like magic, and so Peter Grant and the Folly show up to investigate a mystery in London’s surprisingly roomy sewer and underground subway system. Fun fact: all (or at least most) of the tunnel-based shenanigans that occur in this book are truth in television. The London Underground really is that big and weird.
Meanwhile, the main plot of the series begins with an investigation into a villain from the previous book. This plot thread takes a back seat to the main murder investigation, but bits and pieces of it crop up from time to time as Lesley and Peter work their way through a lengthy list of suspects.
This is another really solid mystery / police procedural book. It doesn’t push the main plot of the series forward that much, but that’s okay–there’s no real urgency to that yet. My advice is to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Whispers Underground Spoilers
I enjoyed pretty much every interaction between Peter and Special Agent Kim Reynolds. Also, Jaget is reliably great in this book and every other one he shows up in (which I think is only this one and
Furthest Station, actually).
The real spoiler in Whispers comes in the form of foreshadowing, when Lesley has her conversation with Albert Woodville-Gentle that Peter doesn’t get a chance to listen in on, and shows him her face. At the time it seems like a distraction tactic, but after the events of Broken Homes it becomes clear that Lesley, frustrated with her colleagues’ apparent inability or unwillingness to help her try and fix her face, was looking for a second opinion. And, to the sorrow of everyone involved, she got one.
Broken Homes
The fourth book in the series is a bit of a departure from the previous ones in that there doesn’t seem to be an overarching mystery at first. It appears to be a bunch of little events happening over the course of several months throughout the magical underworld of London, ranging from a fun spring festival to a mysterious murder or two that doesn’t get followed up on due to lack of evidence. The main plot of the book is running in the background, and it takes a while to come together. It felt like a picaresque sort of approach to writing a police procedural, which I liked in retrospect but at the time did leave me wondering when we were going to get to the plot.
And then the ending tore my fucking heart out, and by God that was when I knew I’d be thinking about this series for a long time to come. I finished Broken Homes just past midnight on Sunday July 9th, and couldn’t sleep afterwards. It was after this that I decided that I had to actually go and read the comic series, the novella, and everything else associated with the books.
Broken Homes Spoilers
FUCKING HELL, LESLEY.
The twist at the end of this book is one of those rare, rare instances where I actually wanted to drag a character out of the book and yell questions at them because I was so mad. Usually betrayal in novels like this doesn’t get to me, probably because it’s always from someone that I expected a betrayal from. I consider myself to be very good at seeing that sort of thing coming. Lesley May, meanwhile? Not a clue until her taser was in Peter’s neck. She was Peter’s best friend, his partner, his fellow apprentice, his crush, and a damn good cop, and I’d just read four books building her up as the rock-solid reliable counterweight to Peter’s more whimsical approach to things. To have that pulled out from under me so suddenly, and to think back over the previous books and notice the little ways it had been set up and how I hadn’t noticed at all, was legitimately shocking to me.
I honestly thought that they had the Faceless Man. I thought that was it, game over, next book will be moving on to a new villain and a new story. I didn’t have any inkling that it was even possible for what happened next to occur. Fucking bravo, Aaronovitch.
…Seriously though, I feel actual, genuine anger at Lesley for making that choice, like she’s a real person who I was personally betrayed by. There are so many things that I wanted to yell at her when I realized that yes, shit, this is actually happening…
First, let’s take a look at what she tossed aside here, shall we? Nightengale is a relic who ignored the outside world from the ’50s onward, leaving Peter and Lesley to drag the Folly into the 21st century. The pair of them were literally defining the new era of British magical policing and setting up the way the entire country would deal with this sort of thing for the foreseeable future. She threw away the opportunity to build her own department and define its traditions and procedures in order to team up with a lunatic criminal murderer because she thought he might be able to repair her face.
Second, I feel like…once she knew it was possible, she should have also known that the Folly could acquire that knowledge too. At the very least, if she’d brought it up to Peter, she should have known he wouldn’t have stopped searching until he found out how to do it himself or realized that the Society of the Rose featured in The Hanging Tree was still around. Maybe she could have started tracing the first Faceless Man’s whereabouts in the ’60s, tried to figure out who he learned it from. Anything but joining someone who is, as she absolutely knows, a horrific sociopathic monster with no redeeming qualities that I can discern. The Faceless Man is cartoonishly evil, and I desperately want to delve into Lesley’s motivations for betraying her friends, her oaths, and just about everyone who knows or cares for her (except Zach, the fucker) to him. I’d also like to know why she seems to think that he won’t betray her in turn, because by all appearances that man has never met a situation that he didn’t ultimately decide to resolve by killing someone, including the problem of what to do with employees and allies when they are no longer of any use to him.
That’s the mystery that really got me hooked on the series. These characters are so well written that I know there has to be more to that story. We’ve only gotten little dripping hints at Lesley’s rationale for her betrayal, in the Night Witch comics and The Hanging Tree, and while I have my theories that I think fit the character (frustration at the inability or unwillingness of the Folly to try and help her repair her destroyed face–she especially seems to have it out for Nightingale, who I think she views as having misled her and Peter in the matter), I really want to know the full details. I keep thinking that once you know something is possible there shouldn’t be any reason to think that you and your friends can’t figure it out or learn how to do it from some source other than fucking Magic Murder-Boner Moriarty, and…and…
Lesley May, I dearly want to know just what the fuck you were thinking. And I need you to realize that you made a mistake, because if you don’t then that means you were never the character I thought you were. And that would be a fucking shame.
Body Work: Comic Series
This one was the first comic series published for the Rivers of London. I got the collected edition, which I bought in digital form on Amazon and read on my iPad. Chronologically it’s set after Broken Homes, and overall is a basic straightforward magic investigation story. Some of the characters are drawn differently than I’d pictured in my head–Stephanopoulos, for example, is described as having a brown flattop haircut in the books, and has a much different style in the comic. Peter didn’t look like I’d expected him to either, but after seeing him in the comic I don’t remember what I used to think he looked like, so that’s probably evidence that they did it right. And they basically pulled Thomas Nightingale out of my head and onto the page, which was satisfying. All of the art is really, really well done, I must say.
The story doesn’t have any connection to the main plot of the series, but it’s a solid police investigation adventure and definitely worth a read if you enjoy comics. No spoiler section here because I don’t think there’s much to talk about when it comes to the plot.
Foxglove Summer
The fifth book seems to be following the trend set by Whispers Underground, in that it’s a breather episode between the major plot books. Much like Whispers, the main plot of the series doesn’t crop up much except in the background, which was very disappointing to me after the shock of Broken Homes. I wanted resolutions to my cliffhangers, dammit.
Foxglove was a really good, twisty countryside mystery, but I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to because it all felt like a distraction from the stuff that had come up in the previous book, which I really wanted to see get resolved. It was a tremendously good police book, mind, combining cryptozoology, UFO hunting, child abductions, and a whole host of other goodies into a delightful package that was then doused liberally in Aaronovitch’s seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of British police procedure and the wonderful sense of place that infuses all of these novels. I really don’t want to give the impression here that it wasn’t a really good novel. It just had the misfortune of coming immediately after Broken Homes, right when I started wanting to follow the serialized storyline and lost patience with the episodic ones.
I also get the impression that Aaronovitch isn’t as familiar with the countryside of Britain as he is London. The small town that the story takes place in certainly does feel like a real place, but you can tell that some of the details have been filled in with a combination of stereotypes and quiet little jokes (like how every single pub in the country is an artisan localvore gastropub). That doesn’t make it bad, and he absolutely nails the specific procedural details of a desperate search for missing children, but it’s all painted in slightly broader strokes than usual.
Foxglove Summer Spoilers
Peter really doesn’t express his emotions all that much, does he? Dude’s more repressed than a Vulcan, and I honestly didn’t realize that fully until he let loose against that tree.
Also, for fuck’s sake Lesley, you can’t shoot someone in the neck with a taser and help the most notorious sorcerer in Britain escape and then go back to texting like you’re still best buds. What are you doing. Nightengale’s right, she’s got to be trying to tell them something, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is. Unless it’s a misguided attempt to warn Peter to not interfere in the Faceless Man’s plans because she doesn’t want him to get killed, but that’s basically asking him to not be Peter, so good luck with that.
As for the plot of the novel, it really is quite good. Finding the missing children at the halfway point of the book was a twist that I didn’t see coming, and one that immediately made me suspicious. It was quite gratifying to see the characters sharing my concerns about possible changelings, and eminently satisfying to see them justified.
Night Witch: Comic Series
This one is another standalone mystery, now with more crazy Russians and more insight into what the Night Witches unit in the Soviet’s WWII army was like. Everyone’s favorite Russian sorceress-for-hire, Varvara Sidorovna, is helping the Folly out with this one, and a few other old friends make unexpected appearances as the Folly investigates a child’s kidnapping that the parents, for different reasons, really don’t want being investigated by the police. As per usual it’s a delightfully twisty mystery.
Also, there’s a scene it in of Nightengale being a serious badass, which made for some really cool visuals.
Night Witch Spoilers
They drew Lesley taller than I expected.
Getting a small look into Lesley’s motivations and state of mind during the brief interlude we had in her head was kind of heartbreaking. Her thinking that her colleagues and friends weren’t even trying to look for ways to repair her face, because they didn’t think it was possible. Her trying to justify her actions, and feeling that sense of disconnection that tells you she isn’t quite convincing herself (“How do you feel?” “I feel like someone else.”). Her going out and about as a minion of the Faceless Man, actively pushing forward his agenda. It all had the whiff of the tragic about it.
Here’s an interesting thing, though: nothing in Faceless and Lesley’s phone conversations near the end of the story implies that he knows she took the ransom money. In fact, she lies to him and says that she didn’t interfere in the operation, just stood by to keep an eye on things and make sure that Peter and Nightingale were out of the way of whatever background business Faceless was up to. So she’s got ten million euros that no one else knows she has, which was last seen going into a stack of envelopes 1500 euros at a time. Where’s that money going? It wasn’t mentioned at all in Hanging Tree, but the fact that she’s putting it into envelopes suggests that perhaps she’s sending it to someone. Or a lot of someones. Or stashing it in different places. Ten million euros doesn’t just vanish–she’s got some kind of plan for that cash. The obvious thing would be that she’s sending money to her family, and if that’s the case I will be surprised indeed if Peter doesn’t end up pulling on that thread as part of the effort to track her down later on in the series.
Black Mould: Comic Series
A third stand-alone mystery comic series, available as of today in the collected format. I really enjoyed the mystery in this one, and also getting a visual look at a few characters who hadn’t appeared in the other comics. The titular black mold was suitably creepy and sinister, and it was a lot of fun to watch Constables Grant and Guleed trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Not much else to say here that isn’t a spoiler. It’s a good, if short, mystery story.
Now that I’ve read all of the comics that are currently available in collected editions, and my mania for reading everything related to this series has calmed down a little bit, I’m not sure if I’ll bother following future comics in this series. They’re putting out issues of a fourth, called Detective Stories, but I don’t really want to spend that much money on something that I read so quickly. They’re great comics, beautifully drawn and with some good comedic and mystery beats, but I paid $13 today for a digital comic book that it took me an hour and a half to read through. Maybe two hours, if I were being generous. I’m not sure if that’s the best use of my money, all things considered, especially when the visual medium means that we don’t get as much of the humorous narration or strenuous attention to every last detail that makes the prose in the main series such a pleasure to read.
I dunno, maybe I’m just not as much of a comics guy as I am a novel guy. Or maybe I’ve been spoiled by free webcomics. Same result either way, really.
Black Mould Spoilers
Why was Lesley listed in the character list at the start of the book? She doesn’t appear anywhere in the comic. It’s new art of her, too (I think?), and the way the rest of the character portraits are set up made me think it was art from the book somewhere. To my immense surprise, she never makes an appearance. I even thought that Ms. Petal might be her in disguise or something, and was watching her suspiciously for any sign of being Lesley, but no, it turns out that Black Mould is just a straightforward side mystery with no connection to the main plot.
That aside, it’s a damn good little mystery. It’s especially cool to get Lord Grant and Dominic on screen, and have Grant’s knowledge of jazz come up again. Dominic looks pretty much how I expected, but Lord Grant has way more hair than the version of him in my head. Also, it was cool to see Molly actually being the badass that was hinted at in previous comics and novels.
The Hanging Tree
After the countryside diversion of Foxglove, it felt really good to get back to the main plot. And goddamn, did things get plot-heavy right off the bat. Not everything gets resolved in this particular novel, but we do get a few proper dustups with some villains who have had it coming for a few books now, as well as some new ones who showed up just for the occasion. The plot starts off seemingly simple, and is then twisted and complicated to great effect as half a dozen magical entities and organizations descend upon London in search of a mystic MacGuffin from the time of Sir Issac Newton, complicating the investigation into an accidental drug overdose connected to the daughter of a very important figure in London’s magic scene.
It gets very difficult to say anything else about The Hanging Tree without spoiling details from previous books, so I’m going to continue the conversation in the spoilers section below.
The Hanging Tree Spoilers
Now, that was a good one. The slow uncovering of the Faceless Man’s identity, the twisty interconnected investigations, the slow realization of who the Faceless Man had to be and why he’d been acting the way he had for the entire novel. I regret to say that I didn’t figure it out myself until the narration mentioned the watch at the very beginning of Peter’s second meeting with Martin. I really should have realized it when the drug dealer was murdered, at the very latest. If I’d been really on my game I’d have figured it out when they mentioned that the flat where the overdose happened was owned by a complicated web of shell companies. My excuse is that I had to wake up at 6AM on the day that I read this book, and was somewhat bleary when I cracked it open.
There were only a handful of things that I didn’t really like about Hanging Tree, and they all had to do with the climax.
First up, I anticipated way too much of what was going to happen. For example, it’s become kind of predictable by this point that whenever Nightengale goes off in a different direction from his apprentice, some serious enemy action is about to drop in Peter’s lap. There’s not much you can do about that when you’ve set up one of your characters as a magic badass beyond compare, but it was kind of tiring to be able to predict so much of the final conflict so readily.
Here’s what I knew would happen as soon as they approached One Hyde Place and it was mentioned that there were two directions they needed to search: I knew that Nightengale would go in the wrong direction, Peter and company would get there a little too late, there’d be a fight where the Faceless Man (now known as Martin) didn’t achieve his objective but managed to escape, and all the different parties who were piling in (the Americans, the Rose Society girls, Tyburn, Reynard Fossman) would show up in the chaos and get dealt with in turn. And all that happened. I did actually expect them to capture Lesley May, and have that be the satisfying resolution to the story with the cliffhanger for next time being what Faceless Martin was going to do about it, but no, she got away too.
Speaking of, that was my second issue with the climax. Faceless Martin and Lesley got away far, far too easily. Martin got hit by a car, for fuck’s sake, and I actually thought he was dead and was thinking “Oh shit, there’s a twist” right up until Peter mentioned that they didn’t find him in the aftermath. And Lesley? They had her cuffed and were marching her to the door after having beaten her down and pepper sprayed her, and then she just…fucking got away. Hit Peter upside the head and booked it. It was an oddly unsatisfying climax for a book with such an otherwise elegantly crafted plot. The Folly didn’t even get Newton’s papers.
Incidentally, this marks the third time that Faceless Martin has come to the attention of the Folly, had his plan foiled, and managed to escape after getting his ass handed to him in a fight with Peter Grant. It’s getting a little formulaic, and the only reason I was surprised at all by the resolution of the book was that I was expecting the formula to change this time around.
All that salt aside, there was some really good meat here too. Finally seeing Tyburn in action, for example, and the aforementioned mystery of who the Faceless Man really is finally being unraveled, and Lesley May sitting down next to Raynard in that cafe and ramping up my adrenaline with a simple “Hello, Peter.” And Reynolds coming back. And Lesley being surprised when she turned around and saw that Peter had made her despite her silly Fair Folk mask and was sprinting straight at her. And the weird-ass magic fanatic PMC motherfuckers, showing up to represent the worst aspects of American interventionism. And Lesley being surprised and hurt by one of the friends she’d betrayed spraying CS gas in her face, that was funny in a kind of tragic way.
Also, we get another wonderfully understated moment where the narration doesn’t mention Peter’s emotions at all but you can clearly understand them anyway, when Nightingale and the Viscountess are talking about the Folly and the Society of the Rose. The way Peter reacts to the stuff about magical healing, you can tell that he’s thinking about Lesley, and how if she’d stuck around with the Folly for just a little bit longer they’d have met with these people now and been able to repair her face without her going over to the Faceless Man. Or he’s thinking that if he’d been able to find these people before Lesley made that decision, then his best friend wouldn’t have tasered him in the back and Lesley would still be at the Folly. Either way, I think it’s pretty damn obvious that this subject is going to come up in a conversation between Peter and Lesley later on, as ammunition to either throw in her face or try to lure her back.
Side note: we are at a total death toll of two, possibly three or four, people who would still be alive if Lesley had let Peter unmask and collar the Faceless Man back in Broken Homes. You had best have a damn good reason for continuing to work with Fuckface McGee at this point, Ms. May, because I am having less and less sympathy for you as the bloodshed continues.
Hopefully the next book won’t be another breather episode with the main plot in the background, like Whispers and Foxglove were. Judging by the pattern of books in the series thus far I expect it might be, though, which would be disappointing because I really, really want to get back to Peter, Nightingale, Lesley, and Martin. Either way, as soon as Lies Sleeping is released, I’m going to be all over it.
Furthest Station
This one is another diversion from the main plot, but it’s a novella so that’s fine and justifiable. There’s ghosts on the Underground, and Peter’s going to team up with his cousin Abigail and his transit cop friend from Whispers to figure out why they’re harassing people. It’s a pretty straightforward little mystery plot, and I quite enjoyed it as a little episodic piece.
Furthest Station Spoilers
What was up with the bunch of foxes that were found poisoned? Was that ever explained? Because I remain confused.
Adam's Wild Theories About the Entire Series (spoilers everywhere!)
Theories about Lesley and Martin’s Relationship
Question for you: with the revelation at the end of Hanging Tree that the reason Faceless Martin is actually keeping Lesley around has to do with her connection to famed riot spirit Mr. Punch, is it possible–likely, even–that Martin was secretly behind the events of the first book in the series? How else would he know enough about the subject to make whatever plan he has going on right now? Also, that would readily explain how a fucking ghost managed to get its hands on a semi-auto pistol in modern London–Martin gave Punch the pistol. Though these things could also easily be explained by Lesley (she got Punch the handgun, she told Martin what happened and he had whatever his bright idea is), I think it would neatly tie everything together if Martin had already tried whatever his plan was, and had it accidentally foiled by PC Grant nailing a ghost to a bridge, and now had to use Lesley to try it again.
Also, how much of Martin’s plans does Lesley actually know about? Her phone call with Peter at the end of Foxglove seemed to imply that she was anticipating something coming in a year, which obviously couldn’t have been the big clashes in Hanging Tree, because those were caused by something that neither of them could have seen coming, to whit Martin’s daughter stealing some of his stuff and getting herself killed through a combination of bad magic practices and too-powerful drugs. However, the fact that his plan is apparently connected to Mr. Punch, the spirit that disfigured her in the first place,would suggest to me that perhaps he hasn’t told her the full truth? Because I can’t imagine she would want anything more to do with that giggling disfiguring bastard of a ghost. Except she obviously does know something of what’s going on (by what she told Peter), and Martin obviously needs her willing participation in whatever the plan is, as proven by the fact that he’s not willing to “accidentally” off Peter for fear of breaking his agreement with her, so…I think I should go back and reread that conversation she had with Peter at the end of Foxglove, see if I can pick up any clues there.
Yeah, I just went and reread it. No clues, except that she wants him to stay out of the way when whatever happens, happens. So Martin has told her that he’s got some evil plan brewing, and she doesn’t think she can stop him or is actively helping him with it. Furthermore, she’s convinced that Peter and the Folly can’t stop it.
Or, possibly, she doesn’t think that the Folly can stop it, but does believe that she can, with her secret stash of ten million euros and inside line on Faceless Martin’s plans. Maybe she saw this as the only way to save Peter–maybe without her agreement, Martin would have killed him at the top of Skygarden tower, and there’d be no one to stop Martin’s plans. Maybe that’s how she justified it to herself, along with getting her face back.
That’s a dangerous line of thinking for me to go down, though, because if it’s wrong I’m going to be even more disappointed with Lesley. Better to think that she’s gone full dark side, and then be pleasantly surprised if she turns out otherwise later on.
Alternate theory. That too-perfect face that Lesley has on, that is described as looking a lot like the Fair Folk. I’m not entirely convinced that face is real. It seems to be that it would have been easier for Martin to not actually actually repair her face, but rather give her a better mask. That’s my theory. That could also be why she’s still working with him, because she needs him to maintain the mask somehow. In the next book (or the one after, if the next book turns out to be another breather episode like Foxglove, knock on wood and hope I’m wrong) maybe Peter can lure her back to the side of good by mentioning the Rose Society to her, and the healing powers that they posses, which could actually repair her face instead of giving her an uncanny valley mask.
That’s assuming that it is a mask, of course, and not some weird fae chimera thing. Which is also a possibility. Still, I think the weighty thoughtfulness with which Peter regarded the information about Lady LL’s healing powers is definitely indicative of that bit of information coming into play in the future, and it’s such a big gamechanger that I have to assume the splash it causes is going to be tremendous. The money Lesley hid from Faceless Martin in Night Witch is a good indication that she’s not entirely in his corner, so giving her an out that lets her get what she wants most without advancing whatever his sinister agenda is might be enough for at least a shot at redemption.
Theories About the Timeline of Lesley’s Betrayal
We don’t know what the exact timeline of Lesley’s betrayal of the Folly is, but I think we can put together some context clues to figure out that she started working for him in between books three and four. That conversation with Albert Woodville-Gentle in Whispers, where she took off her mask, that was obviously a consultation to ask if his freaky bodyhorror magic could potentially fix her. He then went straight to Martin and put Lesley and the new Faceless Man in touch. She was obviously working for him by the point where her and Peter get captured in Broken Homes, because she’s pleading with their captors to call their boss and talk to him before they do anything rash, like kill them both. Because she knows that Martin will tell them not to kill her and Peter, due to the arrangement she has with him. Also, the dead woman with her face blasted off and chimera DNA in her eyeballs, it seems likely that she was an experiment that the Faceless Man was doing to see if he could figure out how to fix Lesley’s face (thus adding another body to the pile caused by her betrayal, incidentally). This makes it clear that she didn’t start working for him during the book, but rather before it, since that murder is one of the first things to happen in the novel.
Final Thoughts and Theories About the General Progression of the World
…Goddamn, I really want to know what happens next with these characters.
I mean, it’s kind of clear where the world in general is going. The Faceless Man is a powerful adversary, but Peter basically sets policy for the Folly now, and is modernizing it rapidly. Other officers in the Metropolitan police are getting the training and knowledge they need to respond to magic threats (to the point where nonmagic policewoman Guleed was able to respond quite effectively to several powerful supernatural enemies in Body Work, Black Mould, and Hanging Tree, including the fight where her and Peter beat the hell out of Lesley). The special support unit now has additional personnel in the form of a new doctor, the remnants of the Society of the Rose are on board for consultations and whatnot, the Rivers are all in the Folly’s corner now that Tyburn has reconciled a bit with Peter, and frankly it’s looking like the start of a genuine magical policing force with more weight than just two or three officers. I’d be willing to bet that within five years it would be impossible for a figure like the Faceless Man to take root in London’s underworld again like he did in the ’60s and ’90s, and at the rate Martin’s failures are piling up he himself is likely going to be dead or apprehended within a year.
That’s the general outline of the way I see things headed. But I want to know the details, because this is a series where the details really matter. I want to know what happens to the people involved. I want a resolution to Peter and Lesley, and I want to see Martin get what’s coming to him. I want to see Nightingale and the Faceless Man actually have the showdown that Martin has studiously been avoiding for six books. I want to know what the fuck is up with the alternate Earth where the Fair Folk live. I want to see more science applied to magic, more mysteries and secrets teased out of the fabric of reality. I want more of this delicious writing, this modern post-noir narration with its historical monologues and British turns of phrase and pitch-perfect detail work.
This series has got its hooks into me, man.
No release date yet on the next book, but I assure you I am awaiting it with bated breath.
In the meantime, I’ll have to find something else to read. The latest Laundry Files book by Charles Stross is out, and I’ve got a seven-hour plane ride tomorrow to go to a job interview in Seattle–maybe I’ll enjoy some more British urban fantasy on the trip, with a spies-and-Lovecraft flavor instead of Rivers of London’s police procedural vibe.
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