bobblington
22nd April 2011, 02:54 PM
I'm signed up to audible and I like to take the odd risk with my selections. I picked out Ben Aaronovitch's first novel Rivers of London this month and baring in mind my new credit comes on the 19th and it is the 22nd today and I've been working in between I must have enjoyed it to have finished it this morning!
The Synopsis on Amazon reads:
My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden ...and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.
I think some of my falling in love was to do with the reader, he had a very level voice, that made the thoughts of Peter come across as though it was all in a days work. Peter makes some interesting observations on things throughout, throwing in random facts and additional throw away comments that come across as someone who just happens to be fascinated in the why? and who looks at things with a sideways perspective compared to the normal. His colleagues describe it as getting distracted from the situation at hand, and to an extent it is, but it also makes him able to see a different bigger picture.
The book rattles along quite nicely - I was impatient for the end though because I needed to know how it would be solved. I liked the roundedness of minor characters that could have been stereotyped and tettered on the edge of this before being pulled back and made whole to the reader.
It's got swearing - which I flinched at at first, but then accepted as somehow fitting to modern life when you get stuck in something weird and confusing - it's an exclamation, expression rather than an insult.
I wanted to know more about Mother and Father Thames and their sons and daughters, but I might get to learn more in book 2.
Finally I would like to say it comes across as fantasy from reading the back and I suppose with the Wizards and Goddess's that it might feel like it is fantasy but it didn't go over the top and ask you to totally believe in the supernatural and it also didn't play the alternative world lots of extra 'differences' but similarities card. Instead it's our world with this layer you haven't notice before and that is a level of different that I find enjoyable.
I am going to be getting the next one ASAP - although not on audio as it's not available yet.
The Synopsis on Amazon reads:
My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden ...and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.
I think some of my falling in love was to do with the reader, he had a very level voice, that made the thoughts of Peter come across as though it was all in a days work. Peter makes some interesting observations on things throughout, throwing in random facts and additional throw away comments that come across as someone who just happens to be fascinated in the why? and who looks at things with a sideways perspective compared to the normal. His colleagues describe it as getting distracted from the situation at hand, and to an extent it is, but it also makes him able to see a different bigger picture.
The book rattles along quite nicely - I was impatient for the end though because I needed to know how it would be solved. I liked the roundedness of minor characters that could have been stereotyped and tettered on the edge of this before being pulled back and made whole to the reader.
It's got swearing - which I flinched at at first, but then accepted as somehow fitting to modern life when you get stuck in something weird and confusing - it's an exclamation, expression rather than an insult.
I wanted to know more about Mother and Father Thames and their sons and daughters, but I might get to learn more in book 2.
Finally I would like to say it comes across as fantasy from reading the back and I suppose with the Wizards and Goddess's that it might feel like it is fantasy but it didn't go over the top and ask you to totally believe in the supernatural and it also didn't play the alternative world lots of extra 'differences' but similarities card. Instead it's our world with this layer you haven't notice before and that is a level of different that I find enjoyable.
I am going to be getting the next one ASAP - although not on audio as it's not available yet.