RogerBW's Blog

The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch 15 February 2022

Contemporary fantasy, sixth in the series. Peter Grant, Metropolitan Police constable and magician, is back in London, starting with a magic-related drug overdose and following clues to the Big Bad.

Well, it's a lot better than Foxglove Summer. But it's very firmly another middle volume, in that modern series style: we want you to read the series in order, so there is mention of the Big Plot, but when the Big Plot is over the series will be over, so what we have left of it gets more and more thinly spread as the number of books increases. The progress here could be summed up in two clauses, and you can say "oh, if only X hadn't happened I could have caught him" as much as you like; the vaguely alert reader knows perfectly well that catching him was never on the cards.

Another problem is that here in book six there are now quite a lot of amazingly powerful magical entities in this world, and it becomes increasingly clear that their powers are limited not by any actual in-world limitations but by what the plot needs them not to be able to do at the time. The bones of artifice are showing very plainly through the flesh of snappy conversation and people being cool.

Aaronovitch continues to take casual swipes at anything "posh", always going for the easy option ("they don't like the things we like, get 'em") rather than ever considering any actual problems of power and who wields it on behalf of whom. (Hint, Peter: you're a policeman. Who decides how much money the police get? What are their priorities for what the police should do?) And while he's proud enough of his research to point out at the end that The Jeremy Kyle Show was no longer on air at the relevant date but he couldn't resist using it anyway, he has a school for girls called just "St Paul's" (which is used informally, but because there's a closely related school for boys nearby, it's "St Paul's Girls' School" in any sort of formal context), which has boarders (with "dorm rooms") – which the real one has never done. Even though he's got the correct term "Paulinas" for its pupils. Presumably he used a real school because after the collapse in quality of recent books he was trying to get back to the real London geography that worked so well in the first book in particular, but frankly a made-up school would have been less distracting.

I can't help noticing that while Grant still mentions people as "white" when they are (because he isn't) he never describes any other ethnicity.

But the basic problem here is that this all feels facile. We need these cool scenes, so we'll make up those bits of connective tissue to get us there. Here's a dribble of ongoing characterisation for the series reader, there's the teaser to remind us that there'll be another book, but while the prose isn't distractingly hard to read my attention was never grabbed by it. So my disbelief was never suspended, and so in turn I noticed things like the errors surrounding SPGS, or "I could smell old petrol and fresh carbon monoxide" (hint: one of those things does not have a smell, and while Peter might be speaking casually he's also trying to update magic for the modern era so it's exactly the sort of thing he'd need to be aware of).

Eh. Many people love this book, and this series. Cool people doing cool things and having cool conversations: what's not to like?

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Foxglove Summer | Series: Rivers of London

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1