Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

[lightreads]

Lies Sleeping

3/5. Peter Grant book.

So it turns out the Faceless Man's big plan was to raise Merlin? Or . . . make Merlin. And that is simultaneously really stupid and kind of interesting. Stupid as in sigh, really? And interesting as in it sets up a thematic conversation about kinds of fantasy and kinds of fantasy fans. The fact that Faceless wrote a joke in Tolkien elvish on a death trap is funny, but also, Peter could read it. They are fans of a lot of the same texts. Recall going through his home and the careful catalog Peter took of the books. And yet what they do with that fantasy fannishness is diametrically opposed, and it kind of works that they have switched positions from what you might expect: Faceless is the one doing something arguably naïve and hopeful, and Peter is the one being like bro, it really does not work that way.

I mean, also, it seems like a metaphor for recent developments in U.K. politics, but whatever.

So that was okay, and the thing Lesley does at the end of this book is exactly right, yes, that is how that would go down. But. This book moves a huge amount of pieces and ties off a lot of plotlines, and yet it felt kind of slack. All tension going out and very little being taken up. And I'm counting the 10% of this book we spend locked in a single room as slackening tension, here.

Also, unrelatedly I have ranted here before about how all pregnancies are apparently accidental in books, because argh, honestly. And on the one hand, are you seriously freaking telling me these people don't know how to operate mundane and not-so-mundane birth control? On the other hand, they did have spectacularly unsafe sex a few books ago, so okay then, fair enough.

So it's a pivot book, and I am interested in finding out what it's pivoting to. But this was not my favorite entry in the series by a long shot.

Comments

[lokifan]

Faceless is the one doing something arguably naïve and hopeful, and Peter is the one being like bro, it really does not work that way.

I mean, also, it seems like a metaphor for recent developments in U.K. politics, but whatever.

Hahaha oh god the truth hurts

[readerjane]

I cannot say how much I loved the Bumblebee Lux. "It always does that first." OMFGLOL

[lightreads]

Ahaha yes.

[ellen_fremedon]

Yeah, the pregnancy is really making me think worse of Beverley because I cannot imagine it being accidental. The Rivers strike me as being in at least subconscious control of their own embodiment to a very great extent; I don't see how Beverley could get, or at least stay, pregnant inadvertantly.

And given that she didn't TELL Peter that they were engendering a new genius loci via the aforesaid spectacularly unsafe sex until after the fact, I think her pregnancy is another reproductive decision she's made unilaterally.

I'm a lot angrier on Peter's behalf than I think Peter is ever going to be, though.

[lightreads]

Yeah. There's a potential theory that it's one of those "choices" that isn't really one. E.g. would she have to get pregnant if there were topological changes to her river and it spawned a creek? Which is all well and good, except (1) we already know how that works in theory by way of the prior inadequately-consented baby-river-making; and (2) that's an explanation, not an excuse.

Basically, I think these books have never been great on consent, and continue not to be.

[ellen_fremedon]

Basically, I think these books have never been great on consent, and continue not to be.

Yeah. Beverley still hijacks strangers to do her bidding and Peter thinks it's an amusing foible, so. Yeah.

[labellementeuse]

(Hi I'm going back through your reviews looking for stuff you liked last year because you have great taste and I need recs.) Anyway, just dropping by months later to say that one of the things I think is interesting in re: Faceless Man and the fantasy texts is that not only are Faceless and Peter both fans, so is Aaronovitch, and so, I think, are a large portion of his readership. Faceless' bookshelves - Tolkien, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, this is my bookshelf aged 7-17 (and not too dissimilar to my current bookshelf). And I bet I'm not alone among Rivers of London fans. I think that's a conscious, deliberate part of Aaronovitch's thinking - deliberately taking "sacred" texts (also very British and white texts) and giving them to the bad guy, forcing his readership to re-examine their relationships with those books and the ways their thinking might align with Faceless.

[lightreads]

Yes, that's a good point. I wish we had a clearer notion of Peter's shelves. What was in his childhood bedroom and what is in the coachhouse now. We get snippets, but.