Whispers Underground
(Peter Grant #3)
by Ben Aaronovitch
fantasy
copyright 2012
read in December 2014
rated 7/10: well worth reading
More fun and fantasy in the great city of London !
Surprisingly little death and violence. Surprisingly ? It may be an attack of cynicism but I expect these wizard in the big city stories to attempt to excite me with extreme violence. And with episodes of near sex, of course.
Peter Grant books one and four have the expected levels of violence. Is number three an accidental aberration, or did some marketing guru detect a slight slump on sales ?!
Not to worry. It's a most enjoyable book.
The regular social irony seems to have shifted to sarcasm. You know, it has moved from humour towards insult. Still funny though.
The plot is more straightforward than I expected. It's very close to being just one murder investigation. Though the final dénouement is not even the identification of the murderer...
In fact, there are several things which make this book different from the other two that I have reviewed. This is not a criticism, just an observation... And if they were all the same, I would suspect that the author was following a standard formula... :-)
I am, however, confused by the minor subplot involving the faceless man...
This book is clearly set before Broken Homes. Yet the hero remembers being pushed off a roof by the faceless man. Which happened at the end of Broken Homes ! Am I confused ? Or is the faceless man in the habit of regularly pushing Peter Grant off roofs ?!
I think that my rating may be a point lower than for other books in the series. Due to a few unexpected niggles affecting my enjoyment...
This is still an excellent book. And well worth reading.
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Problems ? Solved
2 comments:
August 2017: Is it really three years since I first read this book? It seems like months... Time flies, eh? Anyway:
On a second reading, a couple more items come to mind...
Various characters are introduced -- and add very little to the plot. Just extending the cast of characters. Possibly to add a broader appeal to a wider range of readers. Is the FBI agent simply a fop to American readers?
A continuing series can (a) take a small group of characters and run them through different adventures, one key adventure per book. Or (b) take a fixed universe and have a different set of characters having a different adventure -- within the one world -- in each book. The Discworld books consist of small sets of (a) all running within the one (b).
A third option is to (c) continuously extend both the cast of characters and the scope of the universe. Harry Dresden books do that. It's entertaining at first and, after a while, ridiculously confusing. Whispers shows early signs that Peter Grant is heading into the ever-expanding (c) style.
Already there are characters who appear, play a minor part -- and leave me wondering, Who were they? Why did they act that way? What is their history -- their motivation -- for their actions?
All of which makes it harder and harder for a casual reader to read just one random book of the series. There is a feeling of confusion, of being the one stranger in a room full of good friends. A feeling that you won't turn up at the next party -- you won't read other books in the series -- because enjoyment depends on too much private knowledge that you cannot possibly know.
Apart from that, though: Whispers is a book which can be read -- and enjoyed -- by itself. I think. I'm just glad that I have already read earlier books in the series.
August 2017, again:
When the hero -- writing in the first person -- says (as a simple example), "They tried to hit me and John..." Then corrects himself with, "Or, as my boss insists, John and I..." there are two possibilities:
1. This is humour. It indicates that the hero is a fool who does not understand English grammar.
2. The author is ignorant of the correct use of "I" and "me".
As far as I can tell, Peter Grant is an intelligent young man. He would not fail to understand a lesson in grammar. Therefore the *author* is the person who does not understand the correct use of -- possibly old-fashioned -- English.
Wrong, though colloquially accepted: They [subject] tried to hit [verb] me and John [object x 2]. Still wrong, in every sense: They [subject] tried to hit [verb] John and I ["I" is always the subject of a sentence, not the object]. Right: They [subject] tried to hit [verb] John and me [object x 2].
By the third attempt at this humour, the pedant in me was past cringing and into embarrassment.
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