False Value is the eighth novel in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. I’ve enjoyed all the previous novels, but I’m sorry to say that I think that Ben Aaronovitch has now lost the plot. This book was a mess, and worse, it was a boring, unfunny mess.
False Value opens with Peter Grant, wizard policeman, starting a new job in a company that does geeky stuff involving data and algorithms. 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. Unfortunately, Aaronovitch decides to use a convoluted, back-and-forth timeline in the first part of the book to increase suspense, which is unnecessary and annoying. Even more annoyingly, the tech company is called the Serious Cybernetics Corporation and the book is filled with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references. I’m a Hitchhikers fan from way back but even I was totally over the jokes by the end of the first chapter — and they just kept coming. And this was just the start of the hard core sci-fi in-jokes, because ultimately, False Value is science fiction, or a mix of science fiction and fantasy. Which is fine! Ben Aaronovitch is a Doctor Who writer and this is clearly a genre he loves. The problem is that the Rivers of London series has a lot of fans who don’t often read speculative fiction but were initially drawn in by the humour, the London history, the well-researched police procedural bits and the diverse cast of interesting characters — and only some of these elements appear in False Value.
It also seems to me that Aaronovitch has lost control of his world-building. He keeps inventing cool bits of magic to throw into his story – talking foxes! humans ageing backwards! carnivorous unicorns controlled by militant time-shifting fae! — without following up on them in any meaningful, consistent way. So, for example, a talking fox appears for a paragraph to remind us of how awesome the concept is, even though this has nothing to do with the plot, then he disappears. Some new American magicians arrive in London, but there’s no reference to the two groups of American magicians introduced in previous books. The tech plot involves a type of magic developed by women, but where are Lady Helena and Caroline, the witches from The Hanging Tree? Aaronovitch is juggling a lot of elements and he keeps dropping them. This book also relies heavily on the reader being familiar with all of Aaronovitch’s novellas, short stories and graphic novels, particularly The Furthest Station, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect novel readers to keep up with all these associated stories (personally, I gave up on the graphic novels after all the gratuitous female nudity in Black Mould).
There is a bigger issue, I think. The first seven books had a long narrative arc involving the Faceless Man, which was mostly resolved in Book Seven, although Lesley remained at large. She doesn’t appear in this book. Are we meant to believe that Peter and the rest of the London police force would just forget about Lesley and move on? Is False Value meant to be the start of a new seven-book arc with a new villain? Is it possible to write a long-running, open-ended series of books while maintaining character development and the quality of the writing — especially when Aaronovitch is concurrently writing graphic novels, novellas and short stories, working on a Rivers of London television series and keeping up with a hectic publicity schedule?
I went back to read some of the earlier books in the series and was struck by how much I enjoyed them. Despite my familiarity with these stories, they felt fresh and funny. I’d encourage you to try the first book if you’re unfamiliar with the series, but I’m sad to say that I won’t be reading any more of Rivers of London. So long, Peter, and thanks for all the fish.
I’m so sad that Rivers of London, which I adored in the beginning, seems to have petered out so feebly (oh, sorry, just realised what I did there). Actually I think I started to lose interest when all the side projects, novellas and graphic novels, began to appear, because I didn’t keep up with them either.
Vale, Rivers, I’ll miss you.
Totally agree with you. I just reread everything except the graphic novels before I read this including novellas and it was a hot mess. Nothing moved forward at all! Again like you, I got all the references but they were not required and I felt extremely sorry for non English readers because it would be very hard to struggle through.
I hope next book returns to a better equilibrium but unfortunately I think the fact that the author is expecting us to read all his side projects makes me think it won’t
I’m grateful that I had seven really enjoyable books to read from him! If he chooses to keep going in the same direction as False Value, I’m sure he’ll have lots of readers who’ll follow him, but I’m afraid I won’t be one of them.
Having just read the latest novel, Amongst Our Weapons, I’d say he’s returned to form: it’s much more like books 1-7 than FV.
That’s good to hear. I’m not sure if I’m willing to give the series another chance, though. I was finding all the novellas/graphic novels/short stories hard to keep up with.
Caroline’s in it (“Amongst Our Weapons”) 😉
And Lesley May. It’s her fault, really. That and, in fact, the Spanish Inquisition. But these are spoilers.
And there’s more exploration of magical realism, how some beings that prefer to live in a different version of the world, just do that.
“False Value” loses suspense if it’s told in chronological order, and, in particular – another big spoiler – we see that Peter Grant has been fired as a police officer because of the outcome of the previous story. But we also see him operating as a police officer. Which version of this is true is something that Peter is finding hard to manage as well as the reader. You may well dislike this and wish that Ben Aaronovitch just invented a better story that could be told straight.
In “Amongst Our Weapons”, Lesley did a thing some substantial time before events are noted in the councils of the Blue-Serged and Big-Booted, and so there is out-of-order story-telling again when it comes out, not to mention events in the 1940s and 1980s. But starting from a police report is reasonable.
The police are looking for Lesley since “Broken Homes”, but Lesley somehow knows what the police are thinking, so essentially she got away the time before last. Actually, I worry about what’s happened with Lesley throughout the story from book one. Thoughts that I have in that area are that if Peter acted on his romantic feeling for her in the third book – but not when she was drunk – then she might be not where she is now, and on the other hand, Peter may have had a wrong high opinion of Lesley’s character and police skills all along. In the “Detective Stories” retrospective graphic anthology particularly (Aaronovitch, Cartmel, et al), she seems to me more “ruthless and unsympathetic” in mundane policing while she does get an impressive arrest rate – Peter talks about it as an instinct for police work, and he says it while she’s a fugitive – and in another scene where I think Oberon paints her portrait unmasked, she talks about monsters… in which category she seems to place all of magical England and herself. It’s understandable that she thinks that way, but it casts all magical beings as enemies. Though later, she seems to approve of Peter’s relationship with Beverley. This may or may not be a change of mind. I think Zachary Palmer feels that she’s exploited him, but he doesn’t mind. I don’t recall anyone giving Zachary respect except probably the dead guy in “Whispers Under Ground” – and Stephen from the Quiet People.
Thanks for your comment, Robert. Lots of people are recommending Amongst Our Weapons, so perhaps it is a return to form.
I don’t have a problem with non-chronological narratives – I just don’t think it was done very well in False Value! I didn’t for a moment think that Peter would want to leave the police force, so there wasn’t much suspense, it was just annoying.
Interesting thoughts about Lesley. Peter is an optimist and often sees good in people who are very flawed. Perhaps it was Lesley’s traumatic injuries and those months of possession by Mr Punch that warped her character from a rule-abiding policewoman into a criminal mastermind.