The Sword and Laser discussion

I am struggling with this book and I can't figure out why. On the surface, this book should be everything I love. London (a city I love), urban fantasy (a genre I generally enjoy), kooky & memorable characters, and a story with plot and characters (as opposed to one or the other).

And somehow, it's not working for me and I can't put my finger on why. It's a bit horror-y, which I do struggle with, but I got past the big thing in Chapter 2. Granted, I was on a plane at the time on a cross-country flight, so captive audience. But I seem to have stalled out in Chapter 6. I am finding other things to listen to on my drives and other things to read with my eyes.

The last time I tried to read this book, I barely got past chapter 1. And now I'm past there but...

Anybody else?

I struggled with some of it, too, but I think what helped me was the audiobook narrator was so good.

Listening to audio the book has a feeling of past tense as though Peter is telling the tales from a stuffed armchair in the Folly many years in the future.

One of the reasons I like it is that it feels subtly different from other urban fantasy books. More mundane.

Ironically I am listening to the audiobook. This narrator doesn’t seem to do it for me (I had a similar problem with the other book he narrated that we read recently, too). Reading with my eyes is no better (or worse), just not drawn in like I think I should be.

terpkristin wrote: "Ironically I am listening to the audiobook. This narrator doesn’t seem to do it for me (I had a similar problem with the other book he narrated that we read recently, too). Reading with my eyes is ..."

What was the other book Kobna Holdbrook-Smith narrated that we read recently? I can’t remember.

In any case, if the book simply isn’t your cup of tea, then it’s not worth worrying about- just move on to something else.

I do remember that at first the mix between the Rivers stuff and the other mystery seemed a bit superficial to me. It is tonally quite different, like he had two topics he wanted to adress, but had trouble meshing them together.
But in the end, Ruth has it right - sometimes an authors style just doesn't do it for you, independent of popularity and subject matter. Not to worry.

terpkristin wrote: "I am struggling with this book and I can't figure out why. On the surface, this book should be everything I love. London (a city I love), urban fantasy (a genre I generally enjoy), kooky & memorabl..."

For me, I realized with all of the stuff going on with police in the US I'm less comfortable with cops as narrators than I have been in the past and that makes it harder for me to get into this book. Not that it has any effect on series that I already like.

Could it be something like that?

Ruth wrote: "What was the other book Kobna Holdbrook-Smith narrated that we read recently? I can’t remember."

Me misremembering. ;) I was remembering John Lee, who narrated The Prefect and Pandora's Star.

Dazerla wrote: "For me, I realized with all of the stuff going on with police in the US I'm less comfortable with cops as narrators than I have been in the past and that makes it harder for me to get into this book. Not that it has any effect on series that I already like.

Could it be something like that?"

It might be related. Certainly that doesn't particularly help.

I dunno. Guess this is just one that isn't for me.

I'm with you re. the narrator. His breath intakes were distracting. The publisher should have hired V&T's audio engineer.

Cy wrote: "I'm with you re. the narrator. His breath intakes were distracting. The publisher should have hired V&T's audio engineer."

Yes, this is true. It's as if they didn't even try when it came to audio engineering. I shouldn't be hearing that much heavy breathing. That part does get much better from the second part on. What doesn't get better is the absolutely horrible "jazz" that plays at the start of each chapter. I can't figure out why anyone could get away with that in the first place, and then to continue on with it once the series became a hit really astonishes me. I am not a jazz connoisseur or anything, so maybe it's great jazz, but it just makes me wince every time I hear it.

I bought this from Audible. I didn't notice the breathing. All music sounds bad when you're listening at 1.5x speed. ha ha

The music is a foreshadowing for book two.

AndrewP wrote: "The music is a foreshadowing for book two."

It's in all the books. Jazz is part of Peter even if he doesn't necessarily love it. A lot of the recordings are poor (not the narration, the recordings). Could do with being reprocessed as they are a mess.

I didn't participate in this pick because I had already read it years ago and am still struggling with Pandora's Star, but I remember that I was totally underwhelmed. Like terpkristin I had high hopes for the book and it seemed right up my alley and I know a lot of people love the series, but I just couldn't get enthusiastic about it. So, while this might not be massively insightful, at least I'd like to second the unexplainable meh feeling.

I wanted to like this book but for some reason it was a tough read. I liked the uniqueness of the story as it was nothing like I had ever read before. I understand the need for the author to build the environment and setting but I felt that not being from London hurt my over familiarity of places within the story. If someone asked me what was the thing you remember most about the story, I think my reply would be the author described many places within the London area. Nothing about the characters at all was noteworthy for me. Again that isn’t to say it was a bad book by any means, but it just didn’t flow in a way that made it an easy read for me.

Yes; I do wonder how this book works with people are not familiar with the UK - and London in particular. I'm British and I've lived in London, so this book feels very real to me. Leaving aside the supernatural elements, this is an excellent representation of modern Britain/London - but I can fully understand why this could be alienating for people who are not intimately familiar with the culture.

Incidentally, for those people who are desperate for more London minutiae, I can strongly recommend Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography, which (exhaustively) delves into the history of the city from its beginnings to the modern day.

Being an American fan of Doctor Who, Sherlock, Luther & many other British shows & films, I enjoyed this listen & wasn't lost very much even though I've never been to London.

Chewable Orb wrote: "If someone asked me what was the thing you remember most about the story, I think my reply would be the author described many places within the London area. Nothing about the characters at all was noteworthy for me."

Which for me works really well in a way, considering how magic works in this world. It seems London being the memorable "character" makes absolute sense! ;-)

As a Brit from the north of England, I’ve visited London twice, and the second time was not by choice. I find it a thoroughly unpleasant and unfriendly place. My dislike of London definitely effected my reading experience.

I didn’t find Peter particularly likeable either, so spending time with him wasn’t great. I didn’t hate the book, and I there were aspects I rather enjoyed, but as a whole, it just didn’t work for me.

Yeah, this nation remains annoyingly London centric. With a title like Rivers of London at least it's sort of warning you up front.
Peter seems typical of most Londoners in that he is ambivalent about anything outside of the M25.
When I encounter this attitude IRL I cheerfully counter it by making my Westcountry accent comically thick and claiming total ignorance of geograpic locations within the London Orbital.
Wembley = London, Kensington = London, Peckham = London. "That's saff uv the rivuh, mate!"
Drives them nuts everytime. :D

lol, I used to get so annoyed with Londoners when I first worked in a call centre and I’d ask for the postcode and they’d say ‘it’s London 6 7EQ’ (made up post code) and I would say ‘sorry, can you tell me the first letter or letters’. No one would go around saying their postcode was Manchester this or Blackburn that, but Londoners would just assume everyone knew.

Haha, maybe I’m a little prejudice against Londoners. :P

The soft southern pansies.

Yeah, this book is a love letter to London in all its tarnished glory. Aaronovitch does a great job of presenting a heightened magical version of the city, which is very appealing to anyone who knows and loves London, from near or afar.

I’ve just come home from my first visit to London since before the pandemic, and I had a great time taking my little boy around some of the things I loved as a child when I was taken for day trips - the Natural History Museum, double-decker bus rides, walking over Westminster Bridge, having a picnic in St James’s Park in sight of Buckingham Palace. We didn’t go to Covent Garden though as I’ve never quite got over my childhood disappointment that it isn’t actually a garden.

Anyway I can see how your feelings about this book would be strongly correlated with your feelings about the eponymous city, and if you’re indifferent to London or actively dislike it, this book probably isn’t going to be your cup of (English Breakfast) tea.

An analogous experience for me was when I read The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin which is very much a love letter to New York City. I have visited NYC once, twenty years ago, and while I enjoyed my stay in the city I just don’t care enough about it to find a book dedicated to it hugely appealing.

Ruth wrote: "An analogous experience for me was when I read The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin which is very much a love letter to New York City. I have visited NYC once, twenty years ago, and while I enjoyed my stay in the city I just don’t care enough about it to find a book dedicated to it hugely appealing."

Oh, this is such a good parallel - or at least for me. I'm from Pennsylvania and met quite a few tremendously annoying New York City people vacationing in the more picturesque areas of my state. They always seemed so ignorant of anything outside of their city - especially because they draw such sharp distinctions between people from different New York boroughs or even neighborhoods. I have a bit of antipathy to most cities, to New York in particular, and so actually kind of didn't like The City We Became at all. It was hard for me to really care about it.

Being so far removed from London, I guess it's just as close in my mind to a secondary-world fantasy setting as it is to a real place. And I thoroughly enjoyed Rivers of London, not least for the setting.

Seth wrote: "Ruth wrote: "An analogous experience for me was when I read The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin which is very much a love letter to New York City. I have visited NYC once, twenty years ago, and whil..."

The City We Became is high on my TBR, so now I’m curious how I’ll feel, since my feelings for London mirror your feelings for New York and my feelings on New York are overall positive (I visited for a week and had a good time seeing all the places I’d seen in films and on TV), which suggests I’ll rather like the book. We will see! :)

I disliked The City We Became just because I found it so…I guess just that each of the burroughs was so stereotyped. In a way its the natural thing for the author to do so that readers can associate with something but it was almost condescending. It didn’t really read as a love letter to New York to me, more as a diss or satire (and I'm sure that's not what she intended; or maybe she did.) Which is a shame because I loved her other novels.