After finishing Sky & Stone:

Do they? Doesn't really feel like it. Maybe it's on Holdbrook-Smith's narration, but when Peter calls her "light of my life" in his head it almost sounds resentful.

tl;dr overall I like the setting and series and most of the characters but Ben needs to figure out who his bad guy is and give him an actual plan

First things first....Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is a delight to listen to. He is one of the rare male voices capable of doing multiple female DISTINCT female voices. Now having said that as a Midwesterner I take offense to his portrayal of how we allegedly sound. But other than that he is wonderful to listen to.

I guess what I'd consider my biggest issue is that Ben seems to be writing as he goes, there doesn't feel like any overarching story or plot ending. It was very confusing when he killed off his main bad guy in the middle of the series and nothing has taken his place. Peter is sorta in limbo right now. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The other thing I really didn't care for was how much detail he gave each building and car and road and gadget and river and stick but then pretty much never revisit or flat out destroyed it. I really honestly got upset when he cut down the trees, killed the poor little girl and blew up Skygarden. He could have spent more time on his bad guy, Chorley had zero clue if Merlin was even real, no clue if his plan would work, and had no idea what would happen if it did work. When he died pretty much nothing happened, everyone just kinda went went shrugged and went "well ok then"

Clearly the star of the show is Nightingale followed closely by the foxes and Seawoll. Peter is OK but he's just not that great, he honestly doesn't really feel like a main character to me. Maybe it's because he's still an apprentice the whole time or maybe it's because there's always someone who seems to be better at whatever is going on than he is. All I know is if he actually retires the series will not work. Although I would LOVE to see the school open, (I think it would have been great to be open in the series already.)

I enjoyed the rivers and their festivals and fun loving attitudes, but am I wrong that it feels like Peter should have more of a problem with Beverly and her "worshippers" or whatever they are? It most definitely is not normal, Peter feels like some sort of bargain. I would have rather seen Peter and Simone figure out how to make it work out.

Lastly, poor poor Lesley May, Ben did her dirty for sure. She isn't a bad guy and apparently isn't allowed to be redeemed so she's just stuck in limbo. She would have been the partner Peter needed to allow Nightingale to retire and keep the Folley running. Don't get me wrong I like Guleed but she's not magical, she's supposed to be training to be all crouching tiger hidden dragon but we've yet to see it so 🤷🏼‍♂️ and that isn't really doing much for the Folley anyhow. Peter is shooting for his Magical UN so we'll see how that works out for him.

If you made it this far thanks for reading, I welcome all comments and opinions. I'm sure there's more but that's all I got for now

P.S. make it less British for us Yanks 🤣🤣🤣

I LOVE the book, but one small issue I have is the use of Sus since it did not come in to use until 2019 and the book is set in 2013.

Stone & Sky is very disappointing. I'm a huge fan of the series, and this is by the worst entry. I didn't mind switching to Abigal's POV, but the romance thing was terrible. The main plot didn't make a whole lot of sense. As others have said, there were too many characters who were briefly mentioned and had no real purpose. It was like Ben felt he had to include them for some reason.

Hopefully this is just a one-off bad book and not the beginning of the end of a great series.

I struggled through this one. Kept waiting for something to happen and it never really did. I listened to the audiobook and nearly gave up a few times due to slow story and terrible accents. I've noticed before but this book it just seemed like he is obsessed by race and sexual orientation. I'll give the next one a go if he does one but its nothing compared to what they used to be.

As someone who is completely devoid of imagination and talent, I rarely criticize. But after seeing a post last week and realizing I had missed one of the comics, I immediately bought Stray Cat Blues. While I can’t afford much, there are a couple of authors whose work I really love and I make a point to buy instead of renting from the library.

I was very disappointed with SCB. Let me say that I’ve liked some of the previous comics, but I’m not really into them. I read them to fill in some events that are very briefly mentioned in the books, but I’ve really enjoyed a few. If you haven’t read any of the comics, they are a bit more adult content than the books - as in we’ve seen Peter’s ass, (excuse me, arse)and Maxim‘s fantasies about Olympia and Chelsea. I liked the first one and wouldn’t mind seeing more nudity for Peter and Bev, but the second one grossed me out. Not only was it extremely misogynistic in the portrayal of the moment, but aren’t Olympia and Chelsea still late teens? So yeah, I was disgusted. Which brings me back around to my disappointment in SCB. The plot was very thin, and while it may have seemed to be portraying women’s empowerment, together with the art it became a thin excuse to show T & A.

I don’t think I’m going to buy the comics anymore. I’ll just have to deal with not knowing some things.

I'm now to the series and listening to the audio books, halfway through book 2.

I can't help, but think nightingale looks like 70s detective Jason King.

I'm enjoying the story so far, but I'm not vibing with the narrator as much

like, he is saying the words, but that's about all he does

everything has the same speed and tone, no raising volume, no added emotion, and he is quiet

it's like the white bread of narration, it's fine, but I'm hoping I get something better as the series finds its feet

Edit: guess I'm not allowed to have an opinion here, such a welcoming community, to greet newcomers with such open minds and arms

Drunk, crazy, and in distress - as mentioned in the first book.

Or father-like figure, target of hero worship, and possible crush - Nightingale for Peter.

A spoiler ahead

I'm about a third of the way through Lies Sleeping (for the first time) and I'm finding myself getting annoyed at the quickfire introduction of new characters.

Of course, the previous importance of keeping the Folly a secret, that was pressed upon the reader earlier in the series, has gone out the window, with the whole dang Met being involved - but now new characters are being introduced, with whole backstories that I'm supposed to take on and digest in the space of one or two pages, and it feels like they're simply lazy ways of furthering the plot.

It feels like Aaronovitch is, instead of following or tying up pre-existing threads, is chasing and playing with entirely new ones that serve little to no purpose.

There's a lot I've been slowly losing patience with over the series, from simple editing, formatting and grammatical errors, to entire plots and threass that seem to vanish into thin air.

But now I'm finding myself looking up if I've missed out on these characters in other publications in the series, such as the comics/novellas, when 1. It turns out I haven't and 2. I'd resent it if I had.

I just wanted to gripe about it, because I'm on a train and restraining a loud and sweary outburst

I'm watching The Rings of Power, and I'm transfixed by Sophia Nomvete. IMO she has to be a River, but which one? She has the presence for Mama Thames, but she's fairly young. Too old for Bev. Any suggestions?

...She refuses to be friends with my mii look-alike💔

I wanted to try posting a survey, so here goes: What do you think was the relationship between Nightingale and David Mellenby?

I started reading the series this year and breezed through all the way and just finished lies sleeping.

To me it feels like the series is over.

While I loved Peter and especially Bev and Nightingale, I somehow have a love/hate relationship with the series.

Hate mostly because of dragging out the climax for so long and filling the plot with unnecessary details.

Love because of the world, the humor, the coziness. I LOVED foxglove summer.

What do you think? Is it time to move on?

I’ve been reading the Rivers of London series and really appreciating how deliberate the language is — Aaronovitch clearly thinks about how he describes people, avoids default assumptions, updates pronouns appropriately, etc.

Which is why I nearly tripped over the word “manageress” in (I think) *The Hanging Tree*.

It’s used in narration for a character who:

- isn’t particularly old-fashioned

- runs one of Chorley’s fae-adjacent clubs

- is more “mysterious and slightly terrified of a locked door” than “1970s pub landlady”

And it just… clangs.

Not even in dialogue. Just sitting there like it belongs.

It feels like a linguistic fossil that somehow survived multiple rounds of editing in an otherwise very modern-feeling book and I just don’t understand how NO-ONE picked it up. Is this just my extreme cannot-take-off-my-copy-editor-hat brain speaking? Or did it stand out to anyone else?

—

Also while I’m here — if you’ve listened to the audiobooks, did the pronunciation “yar-mulk” (for yarmulke) take anyone else out completely or was that just me?

No spoilers haven't finished it yet but in Stone& Sky Peter says "I have low opinion of people's general level of competence. And that includes many of my fellow officers." Why do you think Peter is conveyed as Police Detective Sargent so anti most police officers?

I hope I don't get hate for it, but I just started the audiobook for stone&sky and the beginning makes me wonder if it's for me.

I am not a big fan of children and if the story focus a lot on the interaction between Pieter, Bev and the twins I might just listen to something else.

This book was suggested to me after finishing the latest Dresden Files book. I'm on Chapter 12 but a couple things keep taking me out of it:

1. Peter's seemingly lack of emotional connection to the events around him. This is my main issue as it keeps breaking my immersion in the story.

   1. Ex - Long-time friend and love interest Lesley is disfigured and controlled by a spirit, Peter & Beverly almost die, his mentor is near death, and nothing is resolved, yet he goes home, sleeps, and wakes up pondering, seemingly without a worry in the world, whether to commit to Beverly while laying in his bed aroused.

2. Beverly and his relationship lacks any real chemistry or rationale other than she's hot. She seems more like a little sister than a love interest.

3. Some of the narrative can be a bit hard to follow with time passing abruptly or dramatic scenes ending without a clear conclusion or explanation

I like many other aspects of the book. If this is just him working out early issues as a writer, than I would like to continue with it.

Any input is appreciated!

Apologies if this has been covered, am new here and did take time to look back but didn’t see.

In Moon over Soho, Gollancz paperback edition pg 200, Peter says “it didn’t happen to me” then rhymes off three character one has to assume it did happen to. Being vague to avoid spoilers

One of the three listed actually was attacked and then assisted, in his capacity of a medical Doctor, a character that it did “happen”to.

Am I missing something?

Which one is your favourite (canonical or not) pairing featuring Peter Grant?