The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch

[lightreads]

The October Man

3/5. Rivers of London novella, except no London. There is a river, though. Set in Germany, starring the German equivalent to Peter, who has never met him and thus has hilarious notions of him. "Oh," he thinks, "Peter Grant would have thought to measure that. He'd take notes and have charts."

Me: Yes, yes he would. This is not always a virtue.

Fun, with some interesting tidbits about the war and exactly how it was that magic slid into obscurity after, though nothing I think we hadn't all filled in already. Mostly, I'm curious to see what this is setup for – a Peter field trip, presumably.

Oh, BTW, I should mention that the audio is not read by Holdbrook-Smith. Which apparently upset some people but makes perfect sense to me, as this is a different narrator and setting, and a different delivery is entirely appropriate.

Comments

[cathexys]

I actually loved the audio and agree that it needed to be a different reader (wasn't sure about the accent at first but it grew on me and at least he pronounced the German correctly).

But then this book was like written for me, familiar places, my home, wine... I seriously got homesick listening to it :)

[lightreads]

I wondered how his German was. It sounded good to me, but my German is, like, fifty words picked up from an American who lived there for 7 years.

[readerjane]

Just finished it. I agree, this is definitely setup for something. The news that new baby river goddesses are showing up in more than just the Thames river valley feels like a bass tremolo: the Earth is waking up, and what will she want once she is fully awake?

I was puzzled by that brief mention at the end, of Nightingale's second apprentice. Is that referring to Leslie May? I can see why someone might refer to Leslie as terrifying, but I'd expected this novella to be set after Lies Sleeping. Alternately, the new apprentice could be Abigail, but why would someone describe her as terrifying?

[lightreads]

I was confused about that too, and leaned slightly towards thinking it was Leslie. But yeah, unclear.