23 ratings (4.13 avg)
4 reviews

Robert

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)

by J.K. Rowling

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Jun 11, 2022 04:54PM

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False Value (Rivers of London, #8)

by Ben Aaronovitch (Goodreads Author)

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Robert said: " If you’ve never read a Peter Grant novel, don’t start here. This book is a bridging book from Arc 1 to Arc 2 and is the 8th novel in the series.

This continues to be, as ever, a police procedural / spy novel with wizards, set around a core premise tha If you’ve never read a Peter Grant novel, don’t start here. This book is a bridging book from Arc 1 to Arc 2 and is the 8th novel in the series.

This continues to be, as ever, a police procedural / spy novel with wizards, set around a core premise that magic is real and was present in the world on a subtle but visible level prior to WWII, however the end of the Occult War wiped out the main centres of European magic, and the American / Canadian (and indeed British Empire) centres of overt magic were all crippled - currently the active, legal, authorised wizards can be measured on one hand per nation. Magic that effects the world to a huge extent has been wiped out in the English speaking and Colonial World, while the post-Colonial powers (with the exception of China) do not have outstanding traditions - the post-Communist nations are an exception.

Magic is rare, but real. People know about it, they don’t talk about it, but the police know it’s real, they just don’t want to admit it is, the scar left by the war is thaumaturgical, physical and mental, and as of book 1 the world is starting to recover, and people are noticing that perhaps everything didn’t end in 1945/46, and maybe thousands of unregistered practitioners have slipped through the gaps.

Magical power rests in the hands of governmental and quasi-governmental organisations, or in mystic groups associated with them. These are run by the few elder wizards who avoided death by one means or another, and long agreements have prevented them taking apprentices.

… of course, this being book eight, things are getting a lot more complex. The central character, Peter Grant, is approaching what we might regard as Journeyman rather than Apprentice wizard status, being well into his decade long Apprenticeship, a potential father and a man who has probably saved Britain from genuine crimes against humanity.

If you do like Rivers of London novels: People who didn’t like the October Man will not like this book as much, as it’s much, much more serious about the magic and the spy angels. It’s not the deliberate faintly tongue in cheek cliche of German Practice that October Man is, but the world continues to be more deeply developed. I liked this, but a lot of people didn’t like the shift to a far less light-hearted world.

Speaking of light-hearted, I think *every* reader will have some trouble with the heavy handed use of Douglas Adams references where the main semi-antagonist organisation (the Serious Cybernetics Corporation) is mentioned. SSC is a pastiche of Google or Amazon at their worst - all that false frivolity around an environment that is in its own way just as divisive and filled with strictures as any Civil Service or main line corporate job. Which would be fine, but *everything* is a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy reference - and the characters know it, which makes the idea that the oligarchic tech-head Musk-like figure is serious utterly unbelievable - you have to look past this, or else the book jars utterly. It’s like two different novels - one more tongue in cheek, like the comic book shorts, and one very serious, like Hanging Tree, we’re stitched together. It doesn’t work very well.

Which is pretty much what looses it it’s whole star. The remaining half star comes from several awkward characterisations and several odd story choices that don’t seem to gel. I get the strong impression that this book was re-written from a novel where Peter left the police force (or was more heavily implied to have done so, with a big reveal at the end) to a more standard novel, probably after feedback from test readers.

That’s a shame, because either book would have been okay - I suspect a lot of people didn’t feel Peter being ‘exiled’ was at all appropriate and so Ben was forced to revise and update, and if the first look they got was the tongue in cheek nonsense, I can see why feedback there was bad. If Peter was going to be thrown to the wolves, it needed to be hard and he needed to rise to the challenge and embrace a wandering journeyman lifestyle. But that wouldn’t be Rivers of London to many.

Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.

But doubly dammed if you mix the streams, which is why I’ve not stripped of two stars - because it’s not *that* bad, it’s going to taste bad to everyone, and as the first book to stumble that badly - particularly the book where Peter really rises (which he should have done in Lies Sleeping) and uses magic as freely as in the October Man - is bound to disappoint, I don’t think Ben could win and with his slow release rate, plus the trouble with getting good old Mr K to do the voice acting for the definitive audiobook, there’s simply little time to do updates.

I could be wrong, which is why I’ve belaboured the flaws. ...more "

Apr 13, 2022 10:58AM · see review