Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
Dec. 18th, 2014 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
When two young girls go missing in rural Hertfordshire PC Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved. It’s purely routine, Nightingale thinks he’ll be done in less than a day.
But Peter’s never been one to walk away from trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police who need all the help they can get.
But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realise that dark secrets underlay the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain’s most junior wizard after all.
Soon he’s in a vicious race against time in a world where the boundaries between reality and fairy have never been less clear …
It’s several weeks after BROKEN HOMES and Lesley’s shocking betrayal. Having endured an investigation by the Department of Professional Standards into his conduct, Peter’s been rattling around the Folly doing little more than train. Then in August two eleven year-old girls go missing in the middle of the night from a small village in North Hertfordshire. Concerned that a hedge wizard may have taken them for a vile magic rite, Nightingale sends Peter to check up on his old Ettersberg comrade, Hugh Oswald, who lives near the village.
It’s clear that there’s something magical going on in the heart of the English countryside so Peter decides to help the local police. It’s not long before Beverley arrives to assist his investigation because something deep and dark is operating in the village that’s far beyond anything Peter’s ever encountered before …
Given the explosive events at the conclusion of BROKEN HOMES, I was really looking forward to the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s PETER GRANT SERIES. Perhaps my expectations were too high because this book fell curiously flat for me, with little action and an awful lot of Peter moping about trying to come to terms with his feelings. I could have forgiven that if the missing girls story had any urgency to it but Peter is so peripheral to that investigation that I didn’t care about the outcome or what was happening. Added to this, is the fact that the resolution has a number of issues and really didn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the overall story. I did enjoy the introduction of Hugh Oswald and the hints as to what exactly happened at Ettersberg and Beverley remains one of my favourite characters with her down-to-earth attitude to magic and sex – in fact Peter only really becomes interesting when she’s in the scene with him. Ultimately though my overall feeling was frustration that there’s no movement in the Little Crocodile storyline, the Varvara Sidorovna or the Leslie storylines and while it can be argued that there needs to be a ‘breather’ book where Peter comes to terms with all that’s happened to him, I found this to be a ham-fisted and dull way of doing it. For me, this is a blip in an otherwise excellent series, although I will no doubt rush to buy the next book in the hope that things will progress.
The Verdict:
Given the explosive events at the conclusion of BROKEN HOMES, I was really looking forward to the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s PETER GRANT SERIES. Perhaps my expectations were too high because this book fell curiously flat for me, with little action and an awful lot of Peter moping about trying to come to terms with his feelings. I could have forgiven that if the missing girls story had any urgency to it but Peter is so peripheral to that investigation that I didn’t care about the outcome or what was happening. Added to this, is the fact that the resolution has a number of issues and really didn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the overall story. I did enjoy the introduction of Hugh Oswald and the hints as to what exactly happened at Ettersberg and Beverley remains one of my favourite characters with her down-to-earth attitude to magic and sex – in fact Peter only really becomes interesting when she’s in the scene with him. Ultimately though my overall feeling was frustration that there’s no movement in the Little Crocodile storyline, the Varvara Sidorovna or the Leslie storylines and while it can be argued that there needs to be a ‘breather’ book where Peter comes to terms with all that’s happened to him, I found this to be a ham-fisted and dull way of doing it. For me, this is a blip in an otherwise excellent series, although I will no doubt rush to buy the next book in the hope that things will progress.
When two young girls go missing in rural Hertfordshire PC Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved. It’s purely routine, Nightingale thinks he’ll be done in less than a day.
But Peter’s never been one to walk away from trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police who need all the help they can get.
But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realise that dark secrets underlay the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain’s most junior wizard after all.
Soon he’s in a vicious race against time in a world where the boundaries between reality and fairy have never been less clear …
It’s several weeks after BROKEN HOMES and Lesley’s shocking betrayal. Having endured an investigation by the Department of Professional Standards into his conduct, Peter’s been rattling around the Folly doing little more than train. Then in August two eleven year-old girls go missing in the middle of the night from a small village in North Hertfordshire. Concerned that a hedge wizard may have taken them for a vile magic rite, Nightingale sends Peter to check up on his old Ettersberg comrade, Hugh Oswald, who lives near the village.
It’s clear that there’s something magical going on in the heart of the English countryside so Peter decides to help the local police. It’s not long before Beverley arrives to assist his investigation because something deep and dark is operating in the village that’s far beyond anything Peter’s ever encountered before …
Given the explosive events at the conclusion of BROKEN HOMES, I was really looking forward to the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s PETER GRANT SERIES. Perhaps my expectations were too high because this book fell curiously flat for me, with little action and an awful lot of Peter moping about trying to come to terms with his feelings. I could have forgiven that if the missing girls story had any urgency to it but Peter is so peripheral to that investigation that I didn’t care about the outcome or what was happening. Added to this, is the fact that the resolution has a number of issues and really didn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the overall story. I did enjoy the introduction of Hugh Oswald and the hints as to what exactly happened at Ettersberg and Beverley remains one of my favourite characters with her down-to-earth attitude to magic and sex – in fact Peter only really becomes interesting when she’s in the scene with him. Ultimately though my overall feeling was frustration that there’s no movement in the Little Crocodile storyline, the Varvara Sidorovna or the Leslie storylines and while it can be argued that there needs to be a ‘breather’ book where Peter comes to terms with all that’s happened to him, I found this to be a ham-fisted and dull way of doing it. For me, this is a blip in an otherwise excellent series, although I will no doubt rush to buy the next book in the hope that things will progress.
The Verdict:
Given the explosive events at the conclusion of BROKEN HOMES, I was really looking forward to the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s PETER GRANT SERIES. Perhaps my expectations were too high because this book fell curiously flat for me, with little action and an awful lot of Peter moping about trying to come to terms with his feelings. I could have forgiven that if the missing girls story had any urgency to it but Peter is so peripheral to that investigation that I didn’t care about the outcome or what was happening. Added to this, is the fact that the resolution has a number of issues and really didn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the overall story. I did enjoy the introduction of Hugh Oswald and the hints as to what exactly happened at Ettersberg and Beverley remains one of my favourite characters with her down-to-earth attitude to magic and sex – in fact Peter only really becomes interesting when she’s in the scene with him. Ultimately though my overall feeling was frustration that there’s no movement in the Little Crocodile storyline, the Varvara Sidorovna or the Leslie storylines and while it can be argued that there needs to be a ‘breather’ book where Peter comes to terms with all that’s happened to him, I found this to be a ham-fisted and dull way of doing it. For me, this is a blip in an otherwise excellent series, although I will no doubt rush to buy the next book in the hope that things will progress.
