Dec 28 2024
I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Ben Aaronovitch wrote Amongst Our Weapons to deliver one particular joke. People who recognize the source of the book’s title will expect that some variation on the joke is coming, but they will have to wait until page 287. Nightingale delivers the setup in Latin, though he …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/28/three-in-the-rivers-of-london-series-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Oct 05 2024
Because of the way that Lies Sleeping ended, Peter Grant finds himself suspended, temporarily he hopes, from the London’s Metropolitan Police. Because expenses don’t stop just because a job does, he signs up to work in the security department of one of London’s biggest and flashiest IT start-ups, the Serious Cybernetics Corporation. The founder, an …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/05/false-value-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Jun 16 2024
Through most of the first six books in the Rivers of London series, a rogue magician known as the Faceless Man has been leading the mystical branch of the Metropolitan Police on a merry chase. Well, not so merry for his many victims. But he’s a formidable practitioner, and while Peter Grant, Nightingale, and company …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/16/lies-sleeping-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Dec 29 2023
Peter Grant, one of two official wizards of the London police force, owes his life to Lady Tyburn, one of the genius loci of the city’s numerous rivers. So when she wakes him with a pre-dawn phone call to say that one of her daughter’s friends has had an accident — the “fatal” is unstated …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/29/the-hanging-tree-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Oct 29 2023
All three Rivers of London novellas that have been published to date — The Furthest Station, The October Man, and now What Abigail Did That Summer — have left me wanting more, which is a fine recommendation for books that are meant as light, if occasionally spooky, entertainment. The stories all take place in and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/29/what-abigail-did-that-summer-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Sep 17 2023
Odd reports from the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground have come to the attention of Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit he’s a part of. They’ve come through as part of a project to deal with sexual assaults and offensive behavior on the transport system, and part of that was “improving reporting rates …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/17/the-furthest-station-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Jun 26 2023
The fourth in Neil Boyd‘s Bless Me, Father series finds the irascible Father Duddleswell laid up with lumbago just as the priest with whom Duddleswell began his career settles in for an extended visit. Father Abe — most definitely not Father Abraham, with seven sons — is getting on in years, but still sly and not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/26/father-under-fire-by-neil-boyd/
May 05 2023
I wrote about Whispers Under Ground that I found the Rivers of London comfort reading, despite the uncanny events, the grisly murders, and the hints about horrible history in British magic. Broken Homes shows that I can still count on a narrator I enjoy spending time with, that there will be adventures and scrapes, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/05/broken-homes-by-ben-aaronovitch-2/
Sep 04 2022
I’m only three books into the Rivers of London series, and already they feel like comfort reading. I can feel confident that with each new Peter Grant book I pick up, I will encounter characters I enjoy spending time with — the narrator first and foremost — that they will have adventures and scrapes, that Aaronovitch will …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/04/whispers-under-ground-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Feb 20 2022
Jazzmen dropping dead in circumstances that are unusual even by their standards. Incontrovertible, if circumstantial, evidence of a real-life vagina dentata. These two sets of mysteries set the stage for the events of Moon Over Soho, events that will show readers more about Constable Peter Grant, much more about his mentor in magical policing Detective …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/20/moon-over-soho-by-ben-aaronovitch-2/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire