First of all, I’m really happy to be back and looking forward to doing this this year! My reading outside of work has been abysmal lately, so I’ve decided to join Cannonball Read again to have more motivation.
The one thing that worked last year, despite the general slacking off, were audiobooks, or better, one series of audiobooks: I’ve fallen into the Rivers of London series and the combination of Ben Aaronovitch’s writing and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s voice acting is just excellent. I’ve just finished the fourth book and have already bought the fifth.
This time Peter Grant and his merry band of Isaacs are drawn into seemingly unconnected occurrences south of the river Thames, where murder and mayhem lead them to an eccentric architect’s masterpiece: Sky Garden. An imposing concrete residential estate with a magic secret.
I very much enjoy these books, they’re the perfect blend of urban fantasy and crime novel that keeps you engaged; they’re not overly complicated, ergo easy to follow as an audiobook, yet not dumbed down, and filled with a great sense of humour.
While this one dragged a little bit in the beginning, at least in comparison to the ones that came before, and I did get spoilered on the big twist, the last hour really made up for it all. We get to see Nightingale in action, there’s drama, real pain, death and betrayal, and even more glimpses into this seriously cool fantasy world Aaronovitch has been building.
I worry that not everything will be tied up in the end, but not everything has to and it’s a great ride so far. An unexpected plus was the fact that I had to get more familiar with Bruno Taut last year, so to see his work quite crucially referenced in this, was very fun. Even if the pronunciation of “Stadtkrone” was a slightly questionable.