tinny

Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich
Rivers of London #07

Peter uncovers clues that the Faceless Man Martin Chorley is executing the final stages of a long-term plan rooted in London's two thousand bloody years of history.

thoughts - slightly spoilery

* I still like Peter's POV, although in some scenes he's still a little bit too naive considering all the things he's seen.

* What I liked a lot is that he doesn't always react ideally in tense/dangerous situations. I found that very realistic.

* I'm not quite sure what to think about the psychological stuff, the colleague who needed counseling after working with Peter, etc. I guess it's a good thing to be mentioned seven installments into a series, but Peter is still being very cavalier about it.

* I really liked how he went back to talk to the river, by making a sacrifice to the Mother, which he (not quite but mostly) knew how to do, which makes sense because he really knows a lot about the rivers by now. She accepted it because she knows and likes him and knows it was given in the right spirit. He still gets important parts wrong and almost suffocates in the process, angering the sewer authority friend he persuaded to let him go into the sewers alone, against regulations. All of this was just hilarious.

* I very much liked all the conflicts he had with Leslie in this book. Her motives are discussed, and they very uncomfortably reminded me of typical reactionary views. Which is kind of a pity, because Peter is often wrong with his quick judgements, and it would have been fitting to have him be wrong about Leslie, but I don't think he was.

* I also very much liked the fairy he found in his cell, and that she's related to Molly. That was so heartwarming and cute!

* There wasn't all that much about his immediate family (neither his parents nor Beverly), but what there was was cute, too. And some of it thought-provoking, because he apparently had never thought about the fact that Beverly is very very old and he is not, and what consequences that will have on a relationship. The Old Man and his wife were setting an interesting example there (and an option for the god to make his lover somewhat immortal).

* I'm not sure what happened with Mr. Punch in the end, and why it even worked. So I guess the main plotline of the book somewhat escaped me. Oops.

4 stars - very quick read as usual, and some things I really liked and hadn't expected



Because I forgot to take this draft with me on vacation, I'm posting it after the reviews for books 8 and 9, so this is the last post for my 2025 Mount TBR challenge. I failed it by three books. /o\ I blame work for this, and I hope that will be less stressful in 2026.

I was trying to catch up at the end, and got to "almost two" - if those had been the last two, I would have made an effort to finish them both. As it was, even that would not have helped, so I wasn't motivated to do that. Those will be the first books of 2026, then, since I've already started both of them.

1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]
4 - 1 star - Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin [DW link]
5 - 5 stars - Murderbot Diaries 1-4 by Martha Wells [DW link]
6 - 4 stars - Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur/We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter [DW link]
7 - 4 stars - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich Rivers of London #07 [DW link]
8 - 3 stars - Der Markisenmann by Jan Weiler [DW link]
9 - 3 stars - The Village Teacher by Liu Cixin [Graphic Novel by Zhang Xiaoyu] [DW link]