Saturday 19 March 2016

Review: Foxglove Summer

Foxglove Summer Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Foxglove Summer, DC Peter Grant travels to the country to look into the disappearance of two eleven year old girls, just to make sure that there is no magic involved. Peter is a pure-bred Londoner, though, and has some trouble adjusting - especially when his stay lasts a lot longer than planned. Luckily, he's got local police man (DC) Dominic Croft and river goddess Beverly Brook to help him along. Oh, and it turns out I love Beverly. She's awesome, clever and fun, and one can but hope that she will be as involved in the next book as well. Dominic also turned out to be a great partner to Peter, but I guess he was a one-time character, seeing as he has his life out in the country.

The editorial stuff wasn't very well done, sadly. There was one time when Ben Aaronovitch confused the name of the mother with that of her (vanished) daughter and let her contribute something to a conversation. There was one time when someone wrapped the end of a string around his wrist, only to give it to someone else in the next paragraph, and some minor mistakes as well. Nevertheless, I gave this book five stars, because...

THIS IS THE BOOK! This is the book in which we learn more about Ettersberg. This is the book in which we learn more about Molly. This is not a book with the Faceless Man in it, though, only with the promise that it will take a few more books to close that story arc.
The story itself was very interesting, with lots of twists and some unicorns (and who doesn't like unicorns in a story about magic?). Some twists I could see coming, some were pleasantly shocking. In the end, many loose strings were still dangling around, so the book could have been longer. I'm relying on the author to tie them up in The Hanging Tree, though, because he's done a good job of picking up loose ends before.

Foxglove Summer is dedicated to Terry Pratchett - a dedication which, if I can read dates correctly, happened before he died. That, of all Peter Grant books, this one was dedicated to Sir Terry could merely be a coincidence, or due to some inspiration Ben Aaronovitch took from discworld books. I've seen some parallels to my favourite mini series around Tiffany Aching (Tiffany Aching Complete Collection: 5 Books) here, which I enjoyed immensely. This also gave me a pretty good idea what to read next, while I'm waiting for the release of the next Peter Grant novel (I still haven't read The Shepherd's Crown, because I'm waiting for the paperback). ;-)

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