False Value (Rivers of London)

[sholio]

Nnnggghhh. I may need to stop buying these every time they come out. I loved the first few, but the series has increasingly missed more than it's hit for me, and while this had some really nice moments, it mostly missed.

General book negativity for False Value under the cut, including some major negativity about Peter/Bev.


To be fair, I struggled with the book in the beginning because of the interlacing time periods, which made it (from my perspective, anyway) very hard to follow or to engage with the new characters. And I am not convinced that this is strictly a "me" problem, because I have had absolutely no problem following other nonlinear books (including Girl on the Train and the Magicians books). The issue with this book is that the two interweaving storylines were very close together in time, taking place in the same geographical area with the same set of characters, leading to an intensely disorienting experience every time we switched chapters in which everything is almost the same but not quite, and then you have to remember which parts of the plot are past and which are present. It was intensely frustrating.

... so there was that. But then once we got into the middle of the book things started to smooth out, and there was a ton of fascinating and cool worldbuilding and various plot threads that looked like they were going somewhere and were all interconnected ... and then, for me anyway, completely failed to land. The book doesn't really go anywhere. It just kind of peters out in a weak climax that doesn't really resolve anything (though the haunted steampunk computer was delightfully eerie).

I mean, it's possible, in fact likely, that a lot of this book was simply setting up dominoes for later books: the magic drones, the possibility of magitech Russian election interference, Skinner, the Librarians.

But you still gotta land it somewhere. And I did not feel like this book landed. Like, for example, why was Skinner building the magic computer? I assumed early on that it had something to do with manipulating elections/markets/etc. But I didn't feel like that was ever resolved. In fact, Skinner in general was a big weird blank - how did he find out about magic? Did he know about the ghost thing, or did he think he was building a true AI?

I was equally puzzled by Peter's total lack of curiosity about true magitech/the possibilities inherent in it, given that combining magic and technology has been Peter's entire thing, with the tech cave in the Folly and so forth. And it's true that the steampunk computer was horrible and creepy, but the drones are actually kind of amazing, and the fundamental idea of being able to blend computing and magic is something that I felt like Peter should've been all over, which he wasn't because .... big tech companies are bad, or something? I mean, yes, the uses they were being put to were awful, but the underlying concepts were really neat, in a way you'd have thought would have had Peter immediately going "ooh" and thinking of ways to incorporate it into the Folly's increasingly complex magic/technology hybridizing.

It felt like the entire book was joyless and lacking in curiosity and exploration simply to make a point that Big Corporations Are Soulless even though a lot of what they were doing was actually pretty cool, and the kind of thing you'd think Peter would have been all over, but instead he just didn't seem interested at all, and what's even the point of putting Peter undercover in a tech/geek atmosphere in which he never geeks out about anything? It felt like Peter's generally inquisitive nature was completely thrown over for the sake of making a point. It's fascinating and cool when Peter and the Folly are working on it, but all the wonder goes out of it when more than 10 people get involved, or something?

... So yeah. The book on the whole was a lot of cool ideas going in a lot of directions that just kind of skidded off into nothing at the end. I'm sure some of it will be picked up later (I'm pretty sure this book was setting up dominoes for a couple of big plot arcs/Big Bads to come), and we did get some cool bits like Chin and Nightingale's duel, which was great, as well as some nifty worldbuilding like the magitech and the fascinating/horrifying specter of the 2016 election being magically tilted. But on the whole, it seemed like there was a lot going on in this book that should have been thematically connected but never quite tied together.


And then there's Peter/Beverly.

I rarely have hard NOTPs among canon couples. Usually at worst I'm merely neutral on it. Whether or not I was particularly enthusiastic about the pairing beforehand, once they're together it's usually not hard to slide my brain into a headspace of seeing what canon wants me to see about why they work together, and/or just elide it as "well, it's canon, nothing to be done" and move on.

But I find Peter/Bev grating, and I'm hating the pregnancy as much as I thought I would. I think this book helped me pinpoint a bit more of why I don't like it, without actually helping.

Basically ... I don't mind that it's a pairing with some potentially skeevy aspects due to her ability to mind-whammy people (which this book both addresses and made exponentially worse by suggesting it's not even something she does on purpose, it just happens). I don't mind that; what I DO mind is that they sailed straight past the skeeve aspects to perfect domestic bliss without actually dealing with it.

I would be on board with Peter/Bev as a slightly creepy pairing in which she's clearly manipulating him a little bit but they both know about it.

The happy domestic thing, though, is really, really not working for me. All the more so because even aside from Bev's ability to control people (and I think this book heavily suggested that she does it all the time in subtle ways, even when she's not intending to), she also never explains things to Peter, or gives him a say in major life decisions like, say, having kids - it's all unilaterally Bev.

I feel like, if you've got this goddess/human relationship where the power is inherently tipped extremely heavily toward the goddess side AS OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE, you have to either lean into the skeeve (either in the sense that Peter is fully aware of how she's manipulating him and is okay with it, or that we know she's manipulating him against his will and it's supposed to be full-on creepy dubcon), or the goddess has to very strictly circumscribe herself where the mortal lover is concerned, and these books seem to be doing neither of these things.

I mean, maybe it's never been an issue because the books ARE very tightly in Peter's POV, and if Peter is being heavily manipulated he might not even realize it, so maybe there's going to be a major reckoning a book or three down the road. In the beginning, I kinda assumed that was where it was headed, but then we keep getting deeper and deeper into domestic bliss, and now she's pregnant and has been incorporated into his family, and I just don't even know. I was fine with Beverly as something eldritch and unknowable, but also with a human side, who occasionally manipulated Peter into sex. I'm a lot less fine with Bev the perfectly ordinary grad student in happy house-and-kids bliss with her boyfriend who also subtly tilts the mind of every single person around her toward serving her and doing things for her without really being aware she's doing it, and everyone is completely fine with this.

Early on, the Rivers were human but also eerie and numinous, and I liked them that way. I feel like the Peter/Bev relationship works much less well now that her eerie numinous quality has gone away and she behaves like an ordinary woman who oh-by-the-way has goddess powers and can make people do almost anything by sending a stray thought at them.

I did really like the comparison Bev makes between her mind-whammy and celebrity in general - that humans, too, have a way of bending probability and human behavior around them. It's a good point and I liked it. But I still maintain that direct mental manipulation is a bit different.

I guess the issue I'm having is that, if Bev is supposed to be an unapologetic goddess who knows that she manipulates people wherever she goes and doesn't mind because she takes being worshipped as her due, she's not entirely coming across that way, and if she's supposed to be a mostly-human who is trying hard not to manipulate the people around her or to interfere with their free will and struggles with guilt about it, she's not really coming across that way either - instead, it's an uneasy combination of the two that doesn't go together, and it's not really working for me.



So yeah, that was actually quite a lot of negativity. I think it might just be that these books are no longer my thing, and they haven't been for the last few books, even though there are still parts of them that I like a lot. Though, to be fair, I did really enjoy Lies Sleeping and I thought it might be turning the tide of my gradual drift away from this series, but apparently not.

Comments

[sheron]

Heh, based on the details mentioned in this post I kind of want to read these now to find out what it's about. Maybe soon! :)

[sholio]

These books have some really nifty worldbuilding and characters. :) I liked the early ones a lot better, but I guess that's often true of a series.

[kore]

Yeah, the early ones have that zing of worldbuilding exploration and keen enjoyment. I felt like he was pushing for the same thing with Foxglove, but other than "she likes drawing and streaking," I feel like she's not really that much of a character.

[ratcreature]

I really enjoyed the book, but I found the time jumping at the beginning confusing too. And I thought it was kind of gimmicky? I'm not sure whether it was supposed to add suspense or what, but I think the opening could have just been unfolding in a linear way with us as readers going along as Peter does without it being artificially chopped up, and still held my interest.

[sholio]

YES, that was my exact problem - there was no reason I could see why the plot couldn't have unfolded linearly. I agree that suspense was probably the reason for cutting back and forth, but it would have made just as much sense in linear order, and wouldn't have required a constant struggle to remember which parts of the plot had happened in which thread of the timeline.

[kore]

I think it's also a sign of sloppy writing -- I was confused even with the date headings, but with an author who knows how to jump back and forth in time like that, you almost don't need the date headings. Like you said, it was all in the same voice and emotional tone, so there was nothing to distinguish the different time periods.

[kore]

I thought we were supposed to have the suspense of not really knowing if Peter had lost his job or not, and then, surprise! he's undercover and that's the actual suspense. But it was immediately obvious he had of course not lost his job, and the actual suspense of the "the audience knows there's a bomb under the seat" the situation could have had was blown. It's the kind of thing that could work in a TV show without much difficulty (everyone is wearing different clothing, the lighting is different, whatever) but a bit more work has to be done in a prose narrative.

[kore]

YOUR FEELS ARE MY FEELS I was nodding my head like a bobblehead doll all through this. And yet, I liked this book more than the last couple of ones in the series! I might just take a break from it and not read every book as they come out. Which is sad, because I have been following the series from the beginning, but I don't want to end up just disliking it. I do think as this series goes on, the way he's writing it is revealing his particular flaws as a creator and they're not counterbalanced enough for me with enjoying the setting and characters.

To be fair, I struggled with the book in the beginning because of the interlacing time periods, which made it (from my perspective, anyway) very hard to follow or to engage with the new characters

I really don't think that's a you problem -- I'm used to reading very complicated narratives, and this one was not that complicated and also not done that well. There was wayyy too much emphasis on the goofy tech company, and the suspense of Peter's being undercover was blown.

ITA the plot doesn't go anywhere, but I've kind of been feeling that way about these plots for a while now: whatever is driving the book is kind of weakly resolved, and there's setup for stuff in the future that might or might not take place (the Faceless Man plot is a BIG example of this). It's frustrating to me because the books aren't standalones, but they also aren't doing much arc building either. I was looking at the JD Robb books, which have fifty entries, and I've only read a couple so far but I'm already way more impressed by how she manages to show character growth and have a gripping plot that ALSO ties into the background arc without making you feel like you've missed stuff.

I mean, it's possible, in fact likely, that a lot of this book was simply setting up dominoes for later books: the magic drones, the possibility of magitech Russian election interference, Skinner, the Librarians.

I LOVED the Librarians. Mrs Chin! The Mrs Chin and Nightingale duel! That is the kind of stuff I am here for! Aaaand then she and the twinky guy who's been flirting with Peter the WHOLE book just go back to the States and they might pop up again sometime later (which Aaronovitch is not good at doing). SIGH.

And you're totally right, for the Big Bad, Skinner was a total blank. I don't know if that's because he was supposed to be a combination of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs or what, but I didn't even really get if he thought he'd created a real AI. His motivation was truly opaque. Sometimes Aaronovitch can use that well (Faceless Man, Lesley) but it also can go on way too long and become frustrating (Faceless Man, Lesley). I get the feeling he doesn't have an end in mind, really, so the series is just toodling along wherever he fancies, and it's really hard to do that with the same group of characters and keep the plot from getting slack and/or soap opera-ish. I'd love it if we saw more of the other characters -- Abigail, Guleed, Bev and her relatives. He even did a little ficlet type snippet about Reynolds on his blog! And there are supposed to be some novellas about Abigail and Nightingale, but who knows when they'll come out.

I was equally puzzled by Peter's total lack of curiosity about true magitech/the possibilities inherent in it, given that combining magic and technology has been Peter's entire thing, with the tech cave in the Folly and so forth

I hadn't thought about this at all, but omg, you are SO RIGHT. Peter is the one who figures out what kills the phones! He loves experimenting! He's a total tech geek nerd and he loves applying that to magic! And you're right too that the satire about the big soulless corporation (which wasn't even that funny, or well done: that many Douglas Adams jokes, really? Maybe in the eighties) totally drowned out anything interesting about the Rose Jars, or the Mary Engine (which just turned out to be....evil? I guess?). Ada Lovelace turned out to be mainly a namedrop, which was really disappointing.

And then there's Peter/Beverly.

Hoo boy was there ever. And in spite of all the attempts to show her doing other stuff, it feels like Beverly is now nearly all about her mystical pregnancy, and think every time she talks with another woman, it's always only about that. It wouldn't be so annoying if I had more of a sense of Beverly as a person.

what I DO mind is that they sailed straight past the skeeve aspects to perfect domestic bliss without actually dealing with it.

Yeah, I really get the feeling this relationship is being set up as a Success (as opposed to Ty's marriage and children, which, the one time we heard about them, were used as a Dire Warning for Peter re Bev) and I would be right there for Bev whammying Peter and him being okay with it. (I think that's what's going on with the handyman, and in her Beyonce analogy.) Like I said elsewhere, if the idea is they're equals somehow (and GOOD LUCK with that in any deity/human relationship ever) or that he balances her out (the concern for the intern who got fired because of Beyonce), it's really not convincing, and also sucks anything not vanilla energy right out of the setup. If she couldn't affect him, or if he kind of became immune to it after a while (I think that's suggested in the book, but they haven't been together that long? and what about the handyman?), that's one thing -- but the river goddess we see Peter resisting is Ty, never Bev. (Not to mention the whole Isis/Oxley setup, and how ordinary people became the newish river goddesses anyway....) I thought Peter would be getting more integrated into the Rivers, and also be trying to be part of the Folly and organize the cop part, not that the goddess would be getting more mundane!

Early on, the Rivers were human but also eerie and numinous, and I liked them that way. I feel like the Peter/Bev relationship works much less well now that her eerie numinous quality has gone away

SERIOUSLY. The one time that quality did come back was at the END, and she was asleep and silent and it was totally about her pregnancy.

[kore]

(I swear these comments don't look so fucking giant in the little white box. >:-(

[sholio]

I do think as this series goes on, the way he's writing it is revealing his particular flaws as a creator and they're not counterbalanced enough for me with enjoying the setting and characters.

I think so, too. I also feel that the series is starting to suffer for having Peter as the only narrator, with the author simultaneously becoming aware of Peter's flaws as a narrator (I felt like this book was actively pushing back against his tendency to never say what he feels about anyone ever) and not really being able to work around it because he is the narrator and he really hasn't changed in howevermany books it's been.

And you're right too that the satire about the big soulless corporation (which wasn't even that funny, or well done: that many Douglas Adams jokes, really? Maybe in the eighties) totally drowned out anything interesting about the Rose Jars, or the Mary Engine (which just turned out to be....evil? I guess?). Ada Lovelace turned out to be mainly a namedrop, which was really disappointing.

Yeah, there's SO much in this book that's interesting and cool, but then a lot of it just falls flat, and most of the corporate satire did for me; it felt very 80s, in general, or 90s maybe, and I could see the notes he was trying to hit, but it was also like ... I've seen this done better elsewhere. We got the point in 5 pages. What are you going to do with it? And the answer was, unfortunately, not as much as he could have. Though the heist and fight was really cool. That was really the high point of the book.

And then there's Peter/Beverly.
Hoo boy was there ever.

This made me laugh. I was afraid I was going to hate the pregnancy and BOY HOWDY was I not wrong.

And in spite of all the attempts to show her doing other stuff, it feels like Beverly is now nearly all about her mystical pregnancy, and think every time she talks with another woman, it's always only about that. It wouldn't be so annoying if I had more of a sense of Beverly as a person.

YES, I'm having this exact problem. Weirdly enough I thought I had a better sense of Bev as a person back when she was a lot more supernatural, unknowable, and eerie. Now she feels like a baby incubator. Part of the problem is just that we only ever see her through Peter's eyes, but it's also impossible to get any sort of feel for what she wants out of the relationship or what she expects from the babies because they never talk about it! In fact the book seems to explicitly cut away whenever they're about to directly talk about anything related to the relationship, the babies, or their future.

Like I said elsewhere, if the idea is they're equals somehow (and GOOD LUCK with that in any deity/human relationship ever) or that he balances her out (the concern for the intern who got fired because of Beyonce), it's really not convincing, and also sucks anything not vanilla energy right out of the setup.

THIS. I do think that's what we're supposed to be getting out of it - but the book hasn't really sold it; they went straight from hot dubcon to domestic partnership and I feel like the book is also trying to retcon it as "Bev never manipulated him and he was into her from the beginning", and I mean, he was into her from the beginning but it also pretty clearly had dubconnish overtones?? I can't figure out if Aaronovitch is trying to walk back from having set up his main pairing as a fundamentally dubconny one by just never dealing with it and occasionally trying to imply that the dubcon never happened, but it's not working. (For me, at least.) Though it would help if they'd explicitly have some conversations about the relationship/their future. This book sort of did that with the discussions about Bev's mind-whammy thing, but it also ended up steering around the thing they actually need to talk about, which is whether she's doing it to Peter and whether he's okay with it!

In fact, a lot of the conversations in this book had that overwhelming sense of frustration that I associate with Connie Willis's dialogue. It's fine to have pauses and omissions and conversations that aren't about what they're really about, but at some point you DO need to have your characters have an actual honest exchange of dialogue about something important rather than talking around it all the time!

[kore]

I also feel that the series is starting to suffer for having Peter as the only narrator

I'm reminded of how some long-running series I've read switched to third person, or even multiple first person POVs (this happened with Sue Grafton's series). I feel like part of the problem is I haven't seen Peter grow very much. He was always a good guy, in a lot of ways he's the moral compass of the books, and that can be hard to keep going for book after book. I also feel someone with Peter's background might be at least a little ambivalent about policing, but that might be too much to ask for a paranormal mystery series. (I do remember the blurb for the first book being something like "Harry Potter crossed with CSI," LOL.)

most of the corporate satire did for me; it felt very 80s, in general, or 90s maybe, and I could see the notes he was trying to hit, but it was also like ... I've seen this done better elsewhere. We got the point in 5 pages. What are you going to do with it?

It felt VERY eighties. It also feels like there are these shadow organizations to the Folly -- there was one literally in the last book -- that are much more about power and wealth, and that results in Skygarden and presumably some of what Ty does and now not-Elon-Musk. A lot of that seems to involve people wanting a perpetual source of magic or to mechanize it. And there's the other side with people like Reynard the Fox and Foxglove's anti-magic aura and Molly's ability to send Peter back in the first book (did that ever come up again? No, right?). There are some really neat worldbuilding possibilities but he seemed to want Douglas Adams riffs instead. :-/

Part of the problem is just that we only ever see her through Peter's eyes, but it's also impossible to get any sort of feel for what she wants out of the relationship or what she expects from the babies because they never talk about it! In fact the book seems to explicitly cut away whenever they're about to directly talk about anything related to the relationship, the babies, or their future.

I REALLY felt that with the stuff about not getting married. Maybe there's something underneath that and the flimsy excuses are supposed to sound flimsy, but we've seen married Rivers -- Ty, and Isis and Oxley, and there are some other ones too I think -- and Peter already has power himself as a magician and prince of the realm and all that. (I did not appreciate the scene at the end with Old!Bev showing up and crying while belly-rubbing, which was like a cliffhanger. The pregnancy was schmoopy and awesome right up until the end! -- and then it wasn't.)

I can't figure out if Aaronovitch is trying to walk back from having set up his main pairing as a fundamentally dubconny one by just never dealing with it and occasionally trying to imply that the dubcon never happened, but it's not working. (For me, at least.) Though it would help if they'd explicitly have some conversations about the relationship/their future.

Yeah, I think a big part of this is Peter is so opaque -- which is partly just his personality (he deflects nearly everything), and it's also his function as the first person mystery narrator. But that only goes so far. Kinsey Milhone was also deliberately closed-off, but one arc in the books was about her realizing that and dealing (or not) with it. Peter's very charming, but at this point he also feels a bit superficial.

[lilacsigil]

My theory about the Peter/Bev thing is that the author thinks the whole thing is cool in a way he absolutely wouldn't if the genders were reversed. It's ok for Bev to (at least) not get Peter's consent for anything important and (at most) totally whammy him because she's a girl and she just wants mysterious girl things! And she and Peter's mum are just the same really!

(I did enjoy the rest of the book more than you did! But the goddess thing should be relevant, and keeps sneaking up to the edge of being relevant, then it just...goes away)

[sholio]

But the goddess thing should be relevant, and keeps sneaking up to the edge of being relevant, then it just...goes away

Yeah, I think that's part of my frustration, and unfortunately my frustration with the things that frustrated me kept overrunning the things I did genuinely like about the book. (Which was quite a lot of it, even if it doesn't sound like it from my write-up above!)

I think you're right that the skeeve would be more evident if the genders were swapped the other way. And it's not that I don't enjoy power-imbalance pairings - there are definitely versions that work just fine for me! I think I just need the imbalance to be acknowledged more explicitly.

[kore]

I actually liked this book a lot better than the last couple of entries! Weirdly that's also part of my frustration -- it felt like this book could be really good, but so much of it just kind of sputtered out.

[kore]

Oh yeah, if it were genderswapped it'd be a lot more like, say, Twilight -- the human woman in thrall to the supernatural powerful man.

(The treatment of Peter's mum irritates me more with every book. Argh.)

[sealie]

*rubs hands together*

Yay – someone to talk to about this. And, importantly, finding out it’s not just me.

I agree with all your points.

I’ve too have enjoyed this series from the outset. But quite simply categorised False Value as badly written. I’d bought it and loaned it to my mam first (as I was very busy). And she said she was struggling, and I was a little unsympathetic**. But act one/scene one, I thought: no he’s going for a media res thing… badly.

There was no sense of place. There was practically no blocking. Sometimes I had no clue where we were. The segues from scene to scene were largely fuck where are we now? And the ‘geeks’ were interchangeable for all they were supposedly different. I couldn’t name a single protagonist a week or so after reading the novel.

Now, I’m pretty well versed in everything from Doctor Who to The Witcher – but I pity the poor reader who hasn’t had the opportunity to delve into as many things. The story was rife with comparison. The sarcasm was also very strong in this one – which was quite interesting to read, as entire sentences and sometimes paragraphs were saying the complete opposite to what was written. But if you didn’t know that they were sarcasm you were reading a different story and perspective.

Your points about Bev and Peter are interesting. I hadn’t delved into it as much. But I’ve been wondering about Nightingale’s lack of substantive comment for a while. And noted the point where Peter mentioned that they couldn’t figure out how to marry; the ceremony might place a geas on them. And was thinking this is not a healthy relationship.

I was pretty narked by the end of the story when Nightingale started to speak on Ettersberg and then stopped.

All in all I was dissatisfied and felt that I missed parts of the story. I think some elements were in previous Rivers of London material that I haven’t read like the graphic novels or the audiobooks.

On one hand spreading the material across different formats is an interesting mode of creating. But for example, my mam can’t see good enough to read a graphic novel. And I don’t have an audible account and don’t particularly want to join.

Yes, this is all pretty negative. I appreciated bits of it. I love the inclusiveness. But – and I’ll say it again – it was badly written.

Long story short I thought that it needed a bloody good beta reader.

**I did apologise to mam

[sholio]

There was no sense of place. There was practically no blocking. Sometimes I had no clue where we were. The segues from scene to scene were largely fuck where are we now? And the ‘geeks’ were interchangeable for all they were supposedly different. I couldn’t name a single protagonist a week or so after reading the novel.

YES, exactly! The blocking and scene-setting on the chapter switches was really, really bad. Every time we hit a new chapter I'd have to go through an entire orientation process of what was going on, where we were the last time we were in this storyline, and where we (probably) were now. And it was made worse by some sections that seemed to follow directly from the previous chapter, but didn't - e.g. Peter calling Silver to arrange a meeting, then a switch to Peter and Nightingale meeting with Silver ... a month removed in time, in a chapter that actually follows on from the chapter before that one. I also kept thinking that chapters were referencing events that had happened in previous books that I'd forgotten about, only to realize that it was actually something happening in the one-month-ago plot thread that we simply hadn't been told about yet.

And yeah, a few geeky in-jokes are one thing, but this book was a never-ending barrage of them, to a point that even felt overwhelming to me!

I agree with you that it was a book that really needed a good hard edit to be a much better book.

[kore]

I didn't mind it so much in the previous books, but this one really did feel like people who hadn't read the comics or Waterstones short stories were missing a lot of background.

[sealie]

Waterson's short stories???

Not every mode is accessible. I love a graphic novel, but not everyone can read them. I didn't realise that there were short stories. I'm not massively fond of audiobooks. What if you're deaf? or dare I say hard of hearing?

I wrote Ben Aaronovitch asking if there was a possibility to serialise the graphic novels into books since my mam (and presumably other fans) can't read them and his PA said there were no plans.

[kore]

Yeah, in the special Waterstones editions of the novels there are short stories at the back. You can see a list of where they go here http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/p/a-chronology-of-rivers-of-london-books.html Some of these are obviously just ideas, like the novellas about Abigail, Nightingale and Reynolds, but you can see how the graphic novels increase in the sequence after Foxglove Summer. I don't think they cause really huge plot holes (yet?) or anything -- it's just that in this entry I was aware of Peter dropping references to events that didn't happen in the books, a lot moreso than in the past.

He did say on his blog "as soon as we have enough short stories to fill an anthology we plan to release them in one volume. About 2-3 years or so." In 2014.

[sealie]

thanks for the info.

It's frustrating though, I deliberately get the River's of London series on an ebook reader so that my mam can also read the stories.

It feels rather exclusionary. I'd really like to read that Nightingale novella. And about Reynolds. But I can't justify double buying.

*wanders off to duck-duck-go*

[kore]

There are some of the short stories on his blog, like this one: http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-home-crowd-advantage.html

And some fun little ficlet snippets: http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/search/label/Moments

But yeah, I would really like to buy a collected edition of the stories!

[chelseagirl]

I've run out of steam on this series, as well; I used to gobble them down the moment they came out and I think I'm 2 or 3 behind now. Think I'll leave it that way.

[kore]

The end of Lies Sleeping was a total bummer, if you ever liked Lesley, even though it wasn't a bad book.