Rivers of London - late to the party

[openidwouldwork]

Hello there!

Glad to have found fellow readers of the series!

So, I started listening to the audiobook of 'Rivers of London' last year, or possibly the year before, but couldn't deal with the guy who does the voice-acting, so gave up again, just a few minutes in. Was pretty torn about that, 'cause a) don't like to give up on books, b) I'm not a native speaker, but I'm fine with Stephen Fry doing Harry Potter, had no problems listening to that and James Marsters voice-acting the Dresden Files is just awesome.

Anyway, gave it another shot the beginning of this year, got used to the speaker and ... found an awesomely engaging series! Exellent worldbuilding and a thought-out magic system!

Started listening to 'Rivers of London' and am in the middle of 'Foxglove Summer' by now... ... and wanna talk about it...

First of all: judging by the amount of fanfic on ao3 (not much) it's a tiny fandom, which I don't get, as there seems to be plot bunny material of any couleur provided?

I have so many questions...

Comments

[flemmings]

You might want to look at the Facebook group Lord Grant's Irregulars. There's discussion of the books there and you can ask your questions about them. (There's also many many mentions of foxes, from later books). But you're right that RoL doesn't spark the loads of fanfic that media fandoms do.

[openidwouldwork]

;)
I'm one of these stubborn people who had interwebs savvy programming flatmates and never joined facebook

[beatrice_otter]

I try to use Facebook as little as possible myself, so I understand!

[beatrice_otter]

First, for a book series, Rivers of London actually has a pretty good-sized fandom and amount of fic. The biggest fandoms have always been in mass media forms, not books: TV shows, movie franchises, anime, etc. When it comes to books, the Harry Potter fandom is the proverbial outlier that should not be counted. Take the Vorkosigan series as an example: it's been one of the most popular SF/F series since the 80s (even if the fandom is smaller now because it's older). It has an active fandom both in the English-speaking SF/F world and in Russia. It has a total of 3,135 fics on AO3.

I got curious as I wrote the above and went on a deep dive of AO3. I got a list of series that have won a "Best Series" Hugo Award and went to see how many fics they have on AO3.
Vorkosigan series (Bujold): 3,135
World of Five Gods (Bujold): 142
Wayfarers (Chambers): 48
The Expanse (Corey): 765 under the TV series, 47 that are tagged for the books but NOT also tagged for the TV series, so 812 total
Murderbot (Martha Wells): 887

Other popular SF/F book series:
Temeraire (Novik): 1046
October Daye (McGuire): 312

The other thing is, there was a SHARP drop in RoL fannish activity during the summer of 2020, which has gotten better but hasn't fully recovered. People looked at the protests and saw all sorts of examples of police brutality and corruption that they hadn't ever spent much time thinking about before, and for some people the whole idea of a police procedural became harder to swallow. Yeah, sure, Peter Grant would never do those horrible things! ... but in the real world, there are far too few Peter Grants out there.

So when you compare RoL with other SF/F book series, we're doing really well! Even larger than The Expanse, which even had a popular TV series (which normally increases fandom size dramatically). I'm just happy that we have as large a fandom as we do! But of course I'm always glad for more people.

What are your favorite bits so far?

[openidwouldwork]

*grins*yes, you are right, I remember paper fanzines... online media in all it's forms is much better!

Ah, I guess as a non-Brit I hadn't made that connection... looking from the outside BREXIT overwhelmes everything else (happy RoL cast to be spared this far)

Favourite bits... hm...

well... Nightingale, of course. So much potential, so many plotbunnies!

Peter's 'whatever it is, I'm gonna deal in a sensible rational way with it' while being utterly delighted that it's magic, duh!

Caffrey and his merry band of paramilitaries roaming around London - wait, WHAT? how the... I wants moar explanation!

Kumar - somehow the underground's odd stuff ends up with me, let's go spelunking in the sewers

the old boy's gossip network - spot on!

And, very important, the humour. Books that make you spontaneously laugh out loud are to be treasured!

[beatrice_otter]

Well, I'm an American, so the protests were really big on my brain in 2020, and I saw people calling RoL "copaganda" and such, so.

I love Peter, and the humor. I love Peter more in the later books, once he stops being so horny all the time (or after Aaronovitch stops focusing on his horniness so much).

I love Abigail, but find her intimidating to try to write because I don't know her dialect and she code switches so much.

I deeply want to read "Mamusu 'Rose' Grant (Peter's Mum) and Elsie 'Hatbox' Winstanley (from A Rare Book of Cunning Device) Have Adventures"

[openidwouldwork]

"I love Peter more in the later books, once he stops being so horny all the time"

;) Yes.

Rivers of London: Peter, you want to get into Leslys pants the whole book, you even slept with her in one bed, but you didn't notice... anything odd?

Moon over Soho: Peter. That woman is our main suspect. Peter! What do you think you... PETER! YOU ARE F*** THE MAIN SUSPECT NOW WT HELL!

...

But I do love how he talks to Nightingale about how to 'deal' with the jazz vampire sisters, and that Nightingale listens and eventually makes an effort.


Abigail, well, I've got annoying younger cousins myself...

[beatrice_otter]

I mean, in Moon Over Soho he was probably under the influence of her magic.

[openidwouldwork]

That's what I thought after the jazz vampire reveal, but now, after Foxglove Summer... I mean, it's even worse with Bev.
At least there was some talking, having cake, dancing, for Peter and Simone prior to the *cough* consumation of the relationship. But yes, all of that seems to have been initiated by her.

With Bev...
RoL - Peter has the hots for the teenager who opened Mama Themses door.
Soho - lets trade her upriver, no prob
... was she even mentioned in Whispers?
Broken - she pointedly complains about having not heard anything from Peter for 9 months
Foxglove - (I'm listening to it again now, there were so many loose ends)
to do some other Rivers, whose area boundaries she violated, a favour, she uses Peter to spark a little river. He's fine with that, also fine with her returning into his bed on dry land. No build-up to that other than 'he still lusts for her', but I'm doing a re-listen...

... all in all I'm not convinced he's not being influenced as well