Review - False Value by Ben Aaronovitch

My copy. MINE...

False Value (Rivers of London, 8)
Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz, 20 February 2020
HB, 404pp

I'm really, inordinately pleased that I was able to buy a copy of False Value at Ben Aaronovitch's signing at Blackwell's in the Oxford Westgate - so to mark that, I'm using here not the jacket picture from Gollancz but the picture I took of MY copy afterwards when having a celebratory curry nearby. (No books were harmed during consumption of said curry).

It was a fun evening. Aaronovitch was in conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic (which I also got signed) and they discussed diversity in books, London, how Aaronovitch did his research (he has no time for authors who get detail wrong like confusing Chinese and Korean names: with the Internet, he said, there are no excuses), why there is no attempt to edit Rivers to aid the understanding of US readers, why Foxglove Summer was written as an act of revenge, what might appear in Ben and Rebecca's future books, and the glories of copy editors. You get good value at an Aaronovitch signing.

Ben and Rebecca in full flow

OK - so what about the book, David? (Also, do you actually intend to review the 8th in this massively popular series? What is there to say? The presumption!)

Well, there is quite a bit to say, I think. Not every massively popular series is still going strong by Book 8. Some become formulaic, continuing to please the fans but not really justifying another book... and another, and another.

Not true of Rivers of London, though. False Value finds us in quite a new place and Aaronovitch exploits this to excellent effect. After the events of Lies Sleeping, Peter faces an uncertain future - suspended from the Met and now starting a new job as security at a tech startup based near the Old Street "Silicon Roundabout" (London's go-to quarter for would be dotcom entrepreneurs - this being London, I should perhaps, London's go-to quarter for much-mocked would be dotcom entrepreneurs). Other things are changing too - the Folly is being redeveloped, the Met is suffering brutal budget cuts (taking out not only officers but canteens!) and Beverley, Peter's river goddess girlfriend, is expecting.

...all mine!

Back to that new job. The Serious Cybernetics Corporation (and yes, the book does abound with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy puns and references) needs a good pair of eyes - and hands - to track down a rat, a rogue who's messing with the systems logs and, perhaps, trying to get where they ought not to be. A rat among the workers known as "mice" (Yes, one of those references). And Peter has the background to help with this. Recruited by ex-Met colleague Tyrel Johnson, he's soon on the case.

This being a Rivers of London novel, though, Peter's never going to be far away from the weird shit. It's fun to see him get to grip with things on his own, with little or no backup (there are of course favours to be called in, rules to be bent) and to learn more in the process about Aaronovitch's alternate London (and indeed, about the actual London). We hear a lot in False Value about how magic is policed in the US, and events in the book link back not only to Lovelace and Babbage and early computing in 19th century London but also to going's on in Silicon Valley. 

(Maybe this is prepping us for future developments?)

This is, I think, a more confident, capable Peter than we've seen before. Despite his setting being quite different, he's on top of things and he's not being run ragged by the Faceless Man or Lesley May. While there is, somewhere, a scary antagonist this book is, compared to some of the previous instalments more a game of chess than a deadly thriller (though it does lead up to a nail biting conclusion) and the pace allows for interludes such as Beverley holding an impromptu river goddess pageant (naturally, bringing together everyone Peter wanted kept apart...) an event that allows Aaronovitch to show just why the two are close (his portrayal of this complex relationship, visibly deepening through the series, is one of the things I like most about these books).

It's in many respects a more straightforward story than many of the earlier books (which is not to say it's simple to follow - there are some fiendish turns to the plot) with no villainous mastermind in sight (or out of sight). The solution to the mystery turns neatly on both information from previous stories and hints dropped here (no spoilers, but watch carefully...) but potentially takes the Rivers series into deeper and darker territory than before: the books are, in a sense, outgrowing London with the threats Peter is now facing not arising from the deep ghost soil of London (Mr Punch, the Faceless Man's cabal of banker would-be sorcerers) but coming from somewhere quite beyond, somewhere deeper.

There is still a lot of humour here - the ridiculous startup culture of the SCC or the the dry wit of Nightingale, who makes several appearances. There is dark humour focussing for example on the downsized Met There is also plain darkness (besides the threat that emerges, we learn more about what happened in the Eckersberg forest). What there isn't, is any sign, hint or trace of this series becoming stale or flagging in any way. Rather this series is ion rude health. There is clearly more to explore in and beyond magical London and I look forward to reading another instalment soon.

Review - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

Cover design by patricknowlesdesign.com

Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London, 7)
Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz, 15 November 2018
HB, 404pp

I've made a little space now to read "bought" books - and hopefully will do more over Christmas, reducing the H&S risk from that TBR potentially falling.

The first of these is quite recent - the latest in Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series. I have no illusions about ever being high enough in the blogging food chain to request a copy of a book such as this, but I'm still smug, because I do have a signed first edition of the original Rivers of London, so there.

Warning for mild spoilers for the previous books - and also that this review will make little sense if you haven't read them yet (but if you haven't, you really shouldn't be starting here, should you?)

Like the previous books, it's eminently readable: if you start this you'd better have blocked out your day because you'll get nothing else done till it's finished. Indeed I think the adventure may actually flow a bit more smoothly than it has in the past, with Peter and the team on top form and a defined, targeted operation against the Faceless Man in train rather than the normal series of seemingly unconnected crimes that eventually join up. It's "intelligence led" policing (cue some subtle Met humour as you can imagine...) designed to draw out the target, not wait for them to act.

Other things are also a bit different. While The Folly has always been part of the Met, it tended to be pretty empty, more of a bolt-hole for Peter, Molly, Nightingale and Toby than a functioning police station. Now that's changed - they even have whiteboards! (The plumbing is as dodgy as ever, though). And it's not just Muggle cops either - in various different ways, a number of Peter's colleagues now have, or are developing, magical abilities (apart from Lesley May, who went over to the Dark Side several books ago). So while we gain something in teamwork and efficiency, there's a but less, perhaps, atmosphere Folly-wise. That's more than made up for by the extraordinary focus of this book - like its predecessors - on London and London history, in particular the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and the Roman origins of the City.

More importantly, perhaps, I think this book has a darker atmosphere than the earlier ones. We are closer to seeing exactly what the Faceless Man is up to, of course, but there are other strands too.  Lies Sleeping presents Western magic (perfected by Isaac newton) in a somewhat critical light. There is a story from the Old West of Newtonian magic being used to bring down a Native practitioner, and Peter muses on what his predecessors at the Folly may have dome themselves in the service of the Empire (I will remind you here that Peter is Black - I really enjoy him introducing characters he meets as white, where appropriate). This is underscored by allusions to Tolkien, of all writers. There is a running joke equating the Folly to Mordor. Of course one does not simply walk into the Folly... but also when a base of rival (cast out?) magicians is discovered, a chapter title - "The Flattery of a Slave" - refers directly to the description of Isengard in Lord of the Rings (implicitly making the Folly the Dark Tower). And more prosaically, in another strand, we see some of Peter's colleagues affected by stress, with a concern over his own wellbeing. And there's even a menacing prophecy (in Latin, natch...) suggesting no good may come to him.

If that makes it all sound introspective and doomy, it's really not, though the story is perhaps slightly more edgy. Aaronovitch shows here - as he has before - a rare ability to portray the mundane and real (all that police procedure, which reads as very accurate, though what do I know?) alongside and sometimes entwined with, the metaphysical (the magic, the London history all those hints of darkness, the mystery that's Nightingale, and much more). It's a mixture that makes for an entertaining story, but also has a sense of depth, of seriousness, of there being a point. And that's only enhanced by the normal shenanigans with the River gods and other strange denizens of London.

Basically, this is Aaronovitch in stonking good form. The book is a delight to read and it's great that, so far in, the series shows no sign at all of flagging.