Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London #7) by Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Date read: November 23 to 28, 2018

Another great installment in this excellent series.

One small caveat though.

I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but now that I’m not reading it anymore, I’m having some trouble recalling the scattered sequence of events. The plot and mystery are fairly clear-cut, as is the ending, but the way in which the investigation is moved along from one point to another is… hard to recall… for some reason.

Or maybe I’m just getting old and my recall reserve is quickly dwindling.

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REREAD: April 2020

The best part of this installment for me is easily the addition of Foxglove to the cast of characters, and the single best moment is when Peter brings her to the Folly and she sees Molly and they run toward each other.

Everything else about this book though? All fine and good and serviceable, but like The Hanging Tree, it just didn’t do it for me. That “something’s missing here” feeling I got during HT carried over into this book. It’s because I think of HT as part 1 and LS as part 2, and so they’re like one long installment in my mind. That’s why I had trouble recalling the sequence of events during the first read through; I kept getting them mixed up with HT, and I still do.

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* * * SPOILERS BELOW * * *

Hanging Tree = discovering Martin Chorley
Lies Sleeping = killing off Martin Chorley

Everything in between these two climactic events were mostly filler to move the plot along. In hindsight, it appears I have a lot of thoughts about LS, most of them conflicting and more on the critical side.

It honestly feels like we have been following the Faceless Man mystery and chasing down Lesley May for a whole decade, but it’s only been half a decade. And was all that work for naught? That’s what it felt like for me when I got to the final scene in LS in which Lesley executed Chorley in front of Peter. It felt like it was a cheap shot. *ba dum tss*

No, really, what was the point of that? It felt like I was deprived of a final confrontation scene between Chorley and Nightingale, which was what the series had been building up to prior to the execution. To have all that build-up end so suddenly (and with a cliffhanger too) just makes it feel cheap to me.

So this book leaves me feeling conflicted. On one hand, I’m glad that the Martin Chorley subplot is somewhat resolved now, but to have it somewhat resolved in such a fashion is highly unsatisfactory. I wanted something more–I still want more–and that something is an end to Lesley May as well. Killing Chorley and leaving her on the run did not and still does not sit well with me.

On the other hand, though, I was glad when I started [book:False Value|45016688] and quickly realized that that it’s a start to a new story arc. I was relieved, to be quite honest. Even breathed a long sigh and everything.

Gonna leave the 4 stars as the writing is on par with the rest of the series. It’s just that that this installment didn’t work for me, that’s all.