False Value: Book 8 in the #1 bestselling Rivers of London series (A Rivers of London novel)

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I understand there were a lot of references to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but I was able to enjoy the book perfectly without having read that book. A big thank you to the author/ publisher for making this available on the day of the hardback release as well. So unless Aaronovitch wrote something super terrible I was pretty sure I would enjoy the story, which doesn’t make for a very unbiased review, but at least I’m honest about it! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

It’s just like old times again, but this time, Peter isn’t a bumbling rookie and Nightingale is beginning to treat him more like a colleague and less like a student, possibly easing him into the role as head of the Folly one of these days. My mum also wanted to know whether I was attending pre-natal classes with Beverley and making sure she ate properly. I’m looking to Kobna’s reading to redeem this for me, as my preferred form for this series has been listening. Who could fail to love Nightingale (Peter’s long-lived, powerful, and elegant sometime boss), Molly and Foxglove (eerie, mute faeries who live in the nineteenth-century police building known as the Folly), the competent Detective Constable Sahra Guleed, the irascible Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Seawoll and the steady Detective Sergeant Miriam Stephanopoulos?I just mentally checked out at the 50 percent mark to just finish this book to have it count towards a book bingo I am doing.

Some we receive from the authors, some we receive from the publisher, and some we receive through a third party service like Net Galley. Like you, I really enjoyed this book, but then, I’ve never DISLIKED a book in this series, so I’m easy. Still not clear on the central mystery of this installment though, but I wasn't too bothered as almost everything else about the story was enjoyable. Drawn into the orbit of Old Street's famous 'silicon roundabout', Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Its owner, an Australian tech billionaire, appears to be involved in a secret project that has some link to the theft of a historical, possibly magical, artefact.Which version of this is true is something that Peter is finding hard to manage as well as the reader. New supporting characters (I loved Stephen and hope to see more of him, and more of Tyrel seems to be a given); new family ties (Peter’s domesticity and impending twins with his river-goddess girlfriend Beverley Brook); a promise of new locations (please, dear Ben Aaronovitch, if I’m really really good, can we please visit the secret supernatural world of New York Public Library? The Peter / Beverley / pregnancy stuff was terrific, and there was a conversation between Guleed and Peter about their respective relationships that I liked a lot. I did enjoy book 7, but it did read as if I’d missed a book or two – I don’t know if this makes sense, but it felt that that the series was no longer a standalone series – that Aaronovitch was pulling material from the graphic novels into the books so that, for a text only reader, a character will suddenly have a whole history with Peter that is never really explained.

This helped remind me that it takes place a few years before the present day, which was especially useful given the time-jumps from one chapter to the next. Speaking of combat magic, there’s a scene in which Nightingale goes full combat mode on another equally skilled practitioner (Mrs. He was able to disable it and sense a vestigium (magical signature) that is the mark of a powerful entity. But they’d rather confiscate it for safe keeping, not unlike Professor Postmartin, the great confiscator himself.Some new American magicians arrive in London, but there’s no reference to the two groups of American magicians introduced in previous books. Just finished my second listen through and this is another great addition to the ‘Rivers of London’ series. It might get cleared up in the future, but Peter's FBI friend is seriously out of the loop, which is something that sort of seemed likely when he kept positioning her as the One Woman Magic Squad.