“If mores the merrier, then Peter’s ecstatic as his partner Beverly, their young twins, his Mum and Dad, his dad’s band, and their dodgy manager, all tag along on a holiday to Scotland. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter’s cousin Abigail in the arcane arts. And they’ll need them too, because Scotland’s Granite City has more than its fair share of history and mystery, myth, and murder. When a body is found in a bus stop, fresh from the sea, the case smells fishy from the start. Something may be stirring beyond the bay, but there is something far stranger in the sky.”
After nine novels set within London and the surrounding area, the tenth volume in The Rivers of London series takes a page from every other long-running series (TV, films, books), by going on the road. With now Peter settled down with Bev, had the twins, and has been told by Nightingale he plans to retire, the next adventure awaits. So what’s that? You go on holiday –well, in the end, a sort of working holiday. So from the magic filled city of London, our heroes venture up north, up to Scotland and the Granite city of Aberdeen –a place that apparently has some supernatural hijinks going on.
Not that this is a bad thing.
Anyways, Stone and Sky removes the familiar London surroundings and Aaronvitch gives us a deep dive into Aberdeen and its myths and legends – and plenty architectural information to make anyone who loves that stuff very happy (according to his Technical Notes at the end, he spent seven months up in Scotland, or Scot Land as some of the locals call it, researching the book).
I mentioned in the last book, 2022’s Amongst Your Weapons, how the series was sort of flagging. At the time, nine volumes were maybe enough. Plus, he seemed happy to be working on the graphic novels (which are seemly moving the story forwards at a faster pace) and the occasional novella.
So maybe here, he’s attempting to shift the series more towards Abigail (she is more prominent here than any of the previous novels), with Peter eventually taking in the teacher role that Nightingale has (no mention of his retirement here), though he appears to be mentoring Abigail. Also, not sure, but this book is appears to set in 2017 or 2018, as Aaronvitch mentions The Felon in office here in the United States. This may also be because of the relationship Abigail gets herself into in this book.
But while she takes up part of the narrative here, it becomes a bit confusing at times, especially since Aaronovitch drops a large volume of characters here – most who don’t impact the story or are there only to move the story forward. Still, the biggest issue with this novel is how much the author ignores the overreaching arcs of the previous nine books, making Stone and Sky feel like – in the parlance of TV vocabulary- a “bottle episode” (despite what would be an expensive location shoot).
There is also a lot of Scottish slang and language used here. It gives it some local flair, I guess, but can be distracting as the reader may need to go over a sentence several times before the brain can translate it properly.
In the end, a worthy read for fans – but those invested in Peter maybe disappointed how much he becomes secondary to Abigail. Clearly, for me, Aaronovitch has decided there was a need to expand his universe (another issue with long-running series) by introducing new characters that will appear, probably, in other tales of The Folly.
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