Rivers of London
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 (and 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 voluble, 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.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
12mentions
8people
2017–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- . Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. Urban fantasy with a great audiobook narrator (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith). Harry Potter meets Sherlock Holmes. Loved the computer history and London Library parts in False Value.
. Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones. Found the first book in a local phonebox library. Especially liked the probability computer in Conrad’s Fate.
. Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Recommended by a barber after I mentioned the cartoon "Scavengers Reign". Annihilation is well worth reading.
. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Novel about memory, forgetting.
. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Short novel imagining Einstein's dreams whilst he worked on his relativity theory.
- > Rivers of London series
Whats nice about the first book is that its a love letter to london. Its not too serious, which a lot of fantasy can be. Its fun.
Its a light fantasy, in that most of the world is "normal" london, and the "silly bollocks" is threaded through reality, rather than the other way around.
At first Kobna kinda grated, but he now is to me, DCI grant, and a whole bunch of other characters.
- I really enjoyed reading “Rivers of London” by Ben Aaranovitch, I read the second one which was not quite in the same page turner realm, but I plan to read more of the series.
- One thing to remember is that you may not get on with works that other people gets engrossed in - so you'll probably need to try a variety of styles to work out what works for you.
Books worth trying to see if you like the styles include:
* Rivers Of London - Magic in a modern London setting
* Burning Chrome - A collection of classic Cyberpunk short stories
* Leviathan Wakes - The start of the Expanse series of works, a harder style of sci-fi
* All Systems Red - The start of the Murderbot Diaries, a softer style of sci-fi
* Permutation City - Existential sci-fi
- I don't think thats the case.
_good_ audiobooks require the reader to have consistent voices for each character, express the correct emotion for the particular scene, and intone some sort of personality into the book.
A good example is Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Rivers-of-London-Audiobook/B004... listen to the free sample) He makes the characters different, and the main character PC grant comes alive in his voice.
A negative example is https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Breakfast-of-Champions-Audioboo... where John Malkovich lethargically stumbles his way through, like a bored supply teacher with a cracking hangover and no lesson plan.
Now, you can make very passable recordings of a book using something like amazon's polly. You can make it more bearable when you inject verbal clues using the markup tool. But. It still feels rubbish listening to it.
However its a shit tonne cheaper, so its probably going to seep in because people want profit more than art, but it would have to be made cheaper for it to take off. There is librevox who've been around for years. They have volunteers to read books and they distribute them with permissive licenses. However thats not as popular as audible. Partly because of content, partly performance.
- Just looking at the first item I absolutely now have to share the amazing "Rivers of London" series of novels, comics and even a TTRPG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Grant_(book_series)
