
Stone and Sky
Out Now: The Brand New Rivers of London Novel
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3 months free
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Narrated by:
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Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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Shvorne Marks
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By:
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Ben Aaronovitch
About this listen
THE BRAND NEW NOVEL IN THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING RIVERS OF LONDON SERIES
'This isn't London. The rules are different up here, and so are the allegiances.'
Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he'll need one when this is over...
If more's the merrier, then it's ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad's band and their dodgy manager all tag along. 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 off.
Something may be stirring beyond the bay - but there's something far stranger in the sky...
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'Ben Aaronovitch has created a wonderful world full of mystery, magic and fantastic characters. I love being there more than the real London'
NICK FROST
'An incredibly fast-moving magical joyride for grown-ups'
THE TIMES
each character and the Folly developed since last book
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An awesome tale Beneath Stone and Sky.
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The narrators make this book - and the series- so well done to them too
A real treat
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Perfect gripping adventure in Scotland
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Loved it - new characters and old
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However, it’s the first one I wish I’d read instead of listened to. While I don’t mind the dual narration at all and I like Abigail as a character, it does feel like Ben Aaronovitch struggles to write as fluently in her voice as he does Peter’s. In some ways this is to be expected with Peter being the OG protagonist, but given that Abigail is a young Black woman, it sometimes feels borderline uncomfortable (like he’s learnt a few words of MLE and used them at every opportunity - it’s not offensive but it’s not convincing either). Perhaps relatedly, Shvorne Marks sounds almost a bit embarrassed sometimes.
Overall this could feel more cohesive - as others have observed there’s a sharp divide between the Peter and Abigail segments in the writing, and as a production more effort could have gone to making sure Shvorne’s character voices matched Kobna’s (where already established). Some dodgy Scots accents from both sides too, I’m afraid.
But look, it’s still 4 stars from me so clearly these aren’t major issues in the end, and I’ll be here for the next one!
Enjoyable but unfocused
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Amazingly well researched
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Kobna Holdbrook-Smith narration, as always, brilliant
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The story is excellent, but it does take five chapters to get going. I had to speed up a segment at one point because Kobna’s voice became too slow, flat and was reading a rather tedious passage which kept sending me to sleep. but the story properly feels like a river of London book after chapter 5.
I’m sorry to say that while Siobhan get the rice right for Abigail, none of the other voices sound right, or particularly different from each other while she’s narrating. having the two readers also made the two plot lines feel quite disconnected, there’s almost literally no crossover between Abigail and Peter which makes it hard to keep track of.
Generally, this is a good book, but probably not the best in the series, which is still one of my favourite series out there.
We need audiobooks of the graphic novels!
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Nice to hear more fun stories read by great narrators
Great
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