[Hitch]

I don't know about you guys, but I was totally disappointed with ROL (Rivers of London, Ben Aaronovitch) book 8. It was a letdown from the rest of the series, which had started out pretty great.

It just seems in book 8 to have utterly devolved--everything that made ROL special--the magical characters/critters, and supernatural plotlines, the best repeating characters (other than the now-ubiquitous Beverly) are MIA or given short shrift.

What can I say about Beverly? Honestly, I feel about her as I came to feel about Susan Silverman, when she intruded--yes, intruded--more and more upon the Robert B. Parker Spenser series of books, where I finally got to the point that I stopped buying them. You bought Spenser for the witty repartee, the interactions between Spenser and Hawk, between the detective and the suspects, etc.--not for the endless drivel with Suuuuuzaaan. If I had to read about her tiny bites of food one. more. time. my brain would have exploded. I don't CARE if Beverly is preggers; don't CARE if her belly needs rubbing, etc. This is a book, not a parenting class. If it were remotely entertaining, if she and Peter had witty exchanges, great, but they don't. They interact like every other young couple with a baby on the way...snore.

And biggest crime, in ROL 8, was that the mystery was muddled, poorly revealed...yuck. Couldn't tell one "Peter infiltrates this tech company" employee from the next and I'm usually pretty good at keeping them separated in my head, but not in that book. They were all much of a piece, with different names. Almost nothing of Nightingale--the most interesting character--or other members of their household, or even the damn dog.

Anyway...Now they want me to pay them $15.00 USD ($14.99) for the Kindle version for Book 9 and I'm just...meh. I'm not feeling it.

Anybody else here a former or existing RoL fan with insight into Book 9? Or spleen-venting? Whatever?

Hitch