Tag: rivers of london

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reading

Seven Books – Day 8

Book: False Value
Page: 432
Which is: The end!
Lead/Lag: –136
Time Spent (today): 1hour 42mins
Time Spent: 11hours 40mins
Pages Remaining: 1652 (27% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter

Apologies for not uploading this sooner. Day 8 is correct in terms of the stats and when I did the reading but we’re nearly a week later when I’m actually writing this. I could hunt for a cool moment and quote but honestly none are fresh in my mind so I’m leaving them.

In the end this turned out to be an OK-not-great book. There was a big confrontation and resolution at the end but it wasn’t as exciting or satisfying as I’d hoped. We got another bit of on-going story that felt shoe-horned in. But we also got a bit of universe-expanding lore that’s interesting.

Meta: So I finished this book and after the disappointment of not reading for a day I was cautiously happy and so I decided to swap out my next book (Thud!) for something I knew I had no reservations about (a re-read of The Bishop’s Jaegers). Which I promptly read one chapter of and haven’t picked up since.

So I’m calling it: this project is officially over. I either failed and only read two books, or I succeeded but redefined the goal half-way through. I don’t think it really gave me the feeling I was looking for which I nostalgically imagined when I re-read those HP posts. But who knows when I look back in a few more years maybe I’ll get it then.

I do hope to not leave it so long until my next blog update, but I won’t be trying to do every day again for a while. And I will keep reading, sporadically.

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7 books reading Uncategorised

Seven Books – Day 4

Book: False Value
Page: 68
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: -120
Time Spent: 4hours 26mins
Pages Remaining: 2016 (11% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: Nightingale sitting down at the next table
Quote: “‘Not librarians,’ he said. ‘The Librarians.’“

Jacob/Stephen seems cool, I am intrigued to find out more about him.

Peter refers to almost being killed by a demon trap? Did I miss something? Was that from a previous book? (No. it’s in the next chapter)

The quote for today is because I’m not sure but it seems like “The Librarians” will be significant. With so pitiful a page count I didn’t have much to choose from.

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7 books reading

Seven Books Challenge day 3

Book: False Value
Page: 53
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: -40
Time Spent: 4hours 7mins
Pages Remaining: 2031 (11% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: erm… maybe the scene at the printers, Peter pulling his police expertise out.
Quote: “Burglary is generally a crime of opportunity and stealth, and worse – it’s done by strangers. Most men are murdered by their mates and most women are murdered by their partners. Most burglaries are done by someone who couldn’t pick their victim out of a line-up.”

I don’t have a lot to say. I am enjoying this, I think, but some things feel a bit off, or maybe it’s me. Like there was a character introduced with a male name but described as female but then referred to (after the name was revealed) as male again. There was some evidence that it was deliberate so maybe I was supposed to infer a trans character? I guess if the character features more heavily I’ll find out.

Had trouble choosing a cool moment, probably because I didn’t read enough for something to naturally stand out.

I am enjoying it I think but I need an hour or two solid reading, when not tired to get past a lot of the set up and into the characters and plot.

Meta: today (yesterday when I’m writing this) was a tough day at work. I was tired and so I reverted to watching things rather than a lot of reading, hence the lag. I’m more impressed I did any reading rather than that I didn’t hit my target.

(Meta-meta: I’m typing this on day 4 and I’m even more tired.)

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7 books reading Uncategorised

Seven Books Challenge – day 2

Book: False Value
Page: 16
Which is: Peter starting work at SCC, beginning to investigate.
Lead/Lag: 18
Time Spent: 3hours 25mins
Pages Remaining: 2068 (9% complete)
Favourite Character: Khrisong
Cool Moment: The Doctor de-hypnotising Victoria
Quote: Not for the first time, Victoria’s well-developed lungs came to her rescue.

I choose Khrisong for favourite character to vary it from the Doctor and also because I liked the contrast of him being very stubborn but also brave and helpful once he was convinced.

I definitely enjoyed this book but I don’t have a lot to say about it. It hits a lot of the “typical” Classic Who tropes and I am intrigued to see the animated version when it gets released later this year.

So I’ve started False Value and I’ve even less to say about that yet. A bit intrigued as to whether Peter is genuinely out of the Met Police or just under cover. Also although I get that the names used by SCC are all Hitch-Hikers references, I wonder if there’s anything more to it than that. Like this place is supposed to be a cool tech company like Google and those places would certainly nod their head to geek culture but adopt a single source wholesale?

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7 books reading

Seven Books Challenge

So I’ve decided to break my long blog hiatus with a new reading project/challenge. Seems appropriate. It’s been one of the most consistent features of my blog since the beginning.

This is inspired by two things:

  • I recently re-read the Harry Potter book challenge posts. (They start here)
  • I watched this video.

What I liked about the old challenge posts was the every day nature of them, a quick summary of where I was. However it also reminded me how brutal some of that period was – all reading all the time until I was sick of it.

Similarly with the video above I liked the idea of it, of someone re-finding a love a reading. But I don’t have the kind of job or reading speed where I can do a book a day.

So I decided to construct a challenge that was about reading every day, about completing a fixed number of books in a short-ish time and would involve blogging every day with the kind of updates I did for the Potter challenge.

So the challenge I’m setting is for 7 specific books (see below) to be read by 7th April. This is the release date of Amongst Our Weapons – the next book in the Rivers of London series.

Without further ado, here’s my list of books with, where appropriate, reasons for picking them:

Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen – a novelisation of a “lost” classic Doctor Who story. Quite short (~35,000 words) and on the list because I’d already started reading it.

False Value – book 8 in the Rivers of London series and the next unread one for me.

Thud! – my next unread Discworld book, number 34 overall. I’ve had various plans to finish the DW series since before Pratchett sadly passed. I initially was going to make that the challenge (it’s only 8 books) but I wanted some variety in my list so it’s only the next three.

What Abigail Did that Summer – book 9 Rivers of L. A novella rather than a full novel.

Wintersmith – Discworld book 35.

Wired Love – a short novel (~50,000 words) I’ve been trying to read for a couple of years. To be honest I added this so I didn’t have two DW books back to back. More about this when I read, and blog about, it.

Making Money – Discworld #36. The next (last?) Moist Von Lipwig book. I enjoyed Going Postal so this seemed like a good “landmark” to aim for in lieu of not completely finishing the series (yet!).

As I said I already started reading Abominable Snowmen. However I only read for about 10 minutes last night before falling asleep, so today/tonight will be my first “official” reading day and I’ll do my first post tomorrow.

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book reading reviews

Whispers Under Ground – Ben Aaronovitch

So book 3 in the Rivers of London (or PC Grant, opinions differ) series. It felt like a long wait before I got to read this. It was 3 books and 14 days. But all those books were perfectly fine (all 7s) and two weeks isn’t that long.

So we’re back with Peter Grant, Lesley May and Inspector Nightingale. Lesley is now also training to be a wizard (or a ‘practitioner’). Like the previous two books Whispers Under Ground has its own story – the mysterious death of an American art student at Baker Street tube station. Also like the previous books there’s more of an ongoing element. This time I suppose you could say it stretches back as well as forward.

I did really enjoy this book, but not quite as much as the other two. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to read it – which was about being tired a lot not about the writing – I don’t know. It does have the trademark humour but either I’m getting used to it or the one-liners are less zing-y than they were. Also the separation between the story-of-this-book and the unfolding narrative is more clear cut. I guess that in book 1 that’s almost accidental because as events occur and discoveries are made you have no way to know whether it’s connected to the current story because you don’t really know until the end that some of it will carry on to the next book. However I also think the on-going story is given more time here. I think in two or three books time it will be the story of that book.

I think I enjoyed those elements more. Getting drip-fed more details about Nightingale’s past is tantalizing and the ‘Faceless Man’ is an intriguing villain. Also I think that the ‘A plot’ involves a lot of running around tunnels and sewers and under the ground generally and it didn’t grab me as much as the other stuff. I like the ‘nazareth’ though.

So now there is a long wait – June! – for book 4 to be published. And I believe book 5 has at least been commissioned. Lots of stuff on the TBR pile to be catching up with in the meantime.

8/10 – our favourite wizard ‘going underground’.

Speaking of TBR it currently stands at 252 down from 253 which is obviously good. The currently reading list is standing still at 10 but I hope to knock that down soon.

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 34: Moon Over Soho – Ben Aaronovitch

I wasn’t kidding when I said I loved Rivers of London. Not only did I buy this and book 3 in the series straight away but I started reading this as soon as I could.

Moon Over Soho picks up a few weeks (possibly months) after Rivers of London. The consequences of that story are still with us and make for a touching and sensitive opening chapter. However Peter Grant is still a police officer and trainee wizard, so when jazz musicians in London start to die of apparently “natural causes” he has to investigate. Oh, I didn’t mention in my last review that Grant’s father was a musician did I? His speciality? Jazz.

So I loved Rivers of London and the follow up didn’t disappoint. It had the same wise-cracking main character narration and a similarly complex plot that weaves through both the everyday and other-worldly versions of London, leavened with some real London history/geography/trivia thrown in. A couple of differences: first there was more left open at the end of this book. It was a complete case and the investigation comes to a definite conclusion but there are elements that will no doubt be picked up in book 3 (and beyond?). I suspect with have met Grant’s nemesis, his Moriarty if you will. I think this is probably because with the success of book 1 Aaronovitch probably has the freedom to plan a few books ahead and so is able to have an on-going component as well as the story of the book itself.

A second difference is the amount of sex in this book. Now the previous book certainly has some sexy characters and a fair amount of unresolved tension between the same but in this book there’s some definite ‘resolving’ going on. This was neither too explicit nor too coy and without giving anything away it did add to the plot. Plus, like the humour, it adds to the fun of the story.

9/10 – book 2 as much fun as book 1.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 32: Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch

So, having read London Falling I marked it read on Goodreads and checked out some of the reviews. That lead me to comparisons with this book. Now I’d been aware of this book as it had had quite a lot of promotion. When I checked on Amazon I discovered that there were now three books in the same series and that Rivers of London was available for the princely sum of £1.99.

Rivers of London begins with Peter Grant still a probationary officer in the Met, seeing a ghost and shortly after witnessing a murder. As he becomes involved in the case he meets the mysterious Inspector Nightingale and soon joins his very special unit within the force, both as a fully-fledged Detective Constable as well as a trainee wizard.

I loved this book. It was light and fun and the main character has a snappy line in comic narration that makes it easy to read. The plot soon becomes quite involved and we’re introduced to a whole host of characters some of whom are not-quite human. There’s a lot in here about London, the history and geography of London and even though it’s clearly very well researched it doesn’t come over as dry or lecturing but is interspersed into the story quite naturally. I think the novel will work well even if you don’t know London but I’ll admit trying to figure out if I’d had a meal with Melissa in a particular restaurant that makes a brief appearance in a chase scene (and so on) was fun.

Obviously I came to this from Paul Cornell’s London Falling so a word about the comparison. Clearly there’s no issue between the writers themselves – they’re both Dr Who writers and Aaronovitch has endorsed Cornell’s book with a quote on the cover. They are also very different in tone and style. Despite some striking similarities in a high-level concept way – they both feature London heavily and concern cops that are investigating supernatural crimes – they are clearly very different and no-one would mistake either for the other after having read even a couple of pages. And I could write you a similarly high-level description of a serial killer book that would match several dozen books and no-one thinks that an issue.

What I will say is that I’m glad that I read Cornell’s first because whilst I like them both very much I think I might have been impatient with his more intense style if I’d read the light, breezy PC Grant book first. That said I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up to London Falling which I believe is finished and winding its way through the cogs of the publishing process. It also has to be said that after reading a few chapters of Rivers of London I picked up the two sequels and will soon be in the position of eagerly awaiting book 4.

9/10 – it really is like a grown-up Harry Potter, but if anything more fun.