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sophia_sol) wrote2017-05-16 12:12 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2017-05-16 12:12 pm
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Second in the Rivers of London series. Another enjoyable book!
I continue to be extremely worried about Lesley given what I know from fanfiction is going to happen. I like Lesley! I like her friendship with Peter! I'm not looking forward to seeing her go to the Faceless One's side. WHY, LESLEY.
The main plot of the book...well there were multiple different cases Peter was working on all at once in this book, but the main one was the case of the jazz vampires. What a sad story that turned out to be in the end. I felt bad for them - they had no idea what they were doing, and were horrified when they found out. But it felt to me like a bit of a cop-out, that it ended with them killing themselves, instead of Peter and Nightingale really needing to do the work of figuring out what could be done with them to make them no longer a danger.
Unfortunately a large part of that case was wrapped up in Peter's relationship with one of the jazz vampires, Simone (before he realized what she was) and that really didn't work for me. Simone had a relatively major role in the book but I never felt like she had any like...personality or dimension. And her relationship with Peter, from what I saw, was pretty much nothing but sex with occasional breaks for eating. There was no indication of why Peter liked her as a person. And her only interest in life outside of sex and food was jazz, something Peter has zero interest in. Why was Peter so into her!
In general in these books Peter is Too Heterosexual for me to understand - he keeps on being sexually interested in various women, often multiple at a time. But at least the other objects of his interest seem to me to be good choices. Leslie, for example, is clearly a friend, so his interest there makes sense. And Beverley Brook is just obviously (to me) an interesting person. And I know, I know, some people are just into sex enough that they're willing to get into a relationship on that basis alone, but although Peter's always been interested in sex, it never seemed to me like that was all he wanted out of a relationship, so the thing with Simone just didn't make sense to me.
BUT ALSO Peter ignored/managed to forget that Simone was the bereaved in one of his murder cases! He started seeing her within days or at most weeks of her previous lover DYING with HIM AS THE OFFICER ON THE CASE and he sees nothing weird or wrong about this. In Peter's shoes I would have been pretty suspicious of Simone for so promptly wanting to fall into bed with the police officer investigating her lover's death.
To be honest I was half-convinced through most of the book that Simone was putting the whammy on Peter in some way, because it was the only way their relationship could make sense to me. But no. Apparently their relationship was Totally Normal other than Simone happening to be a jazz vampire. But possibly I am just too asexual/aromantic for everything and this is why I read it all so wrong?
At any rate other than the romance subplot and the way that I kept getting Peter's multiple cases confused with each other I enjoyed the book a great deal.
I continue to be extremely worried about Lesley given what I know from fanfiction is going to happen. I like Lesley! I like her friendship with Peter! I'm not looking forward to seeing her go to the Faceless One's side. WHY, LESLEY.
The main plot of the book...well there were multiple different cases Peter was working on all at once in this book, but the main one was the case of the jazz vampires. What a sad story that turned out to be in the end. I felt bad for them - they had no idea what they were doing, and were horrified when they found out. But it felt to me like a bit of a cop-out, that it ended with them killing themselves, instead of Peter and Nightingale really needing to do the work of figuring out what could be done with them to make them no longer a danger.
Unfortunately a large part of that case was wrapped up in Peter's relationship with one of the jazz vampires, Simone (before he realized what she was) and that really didn't work for me. Simone had a relatively major role in the book but I never felt like she had any like...personality or dimension. And her relationship with Peter, from what I saw, was pretty much nothing but sex with occasional breaks for eating. There was no indication of why Peter liked her as a person. And her only interest in life outside of sex and food was jazz, something Peter has zero interest in. Why was Peter so into her!
In general in these books Peter is Too Heterosexual for me to understand - he keeps on being sexually interested in various women, often multiple at a time. But at least the other objects of his interest seem to me to be good choices. Leslie, for example, is clearly a friend, so his interest there makes sense. And Beverley Brook is just obviously (to me) an interesting person. And I know, I know, some people are just into sex enough that they're willing to get into a relationship on that basis alone, but although Peter's always been interested in sex, it never seemed to me like that was all he wanted out of a relationship, so the thing with Simone just didn't make sense to me.
BUT ALSO Peter ignored/managed to forget that Simone was the bereaved in one of his murder cases! He started seeing her within days or at most weeks of her previous lover DYING with HIM AS THE OFFICER ON THE CASE and he sees nothing weird or wrong about this. In Peter's shoes I would have been pretty suspicious of Simone for so promptly wanting to fall into bed with the police officer investigating her lover's death.
To be honest I was half-convinced through most of the book that Simone was putting the whammy on Peter in some way, because it was the only way their relationship could make sense to me. But no. Apparently their relationship was Totally Normal other than Simone happening to be a jazz vampire. But possibly I am just too asexual/aromantic for everything and this is why I read it all so wrong?
At any rate other than the romance subplot and the way that I kept getting Peter's multiple cases confused with each other I enjoyed the book a great deal.