One, two, miss a few ... I gave up on the Rivers of London series because fantasy isn't my thing and the Hitchiker's Guide-esque humour is dated and twee, but I read the blurb for the eighth instalment, about Ada Lovelace and artificial intelligence, and was intrigued. Aaronovitch lets the reader jump back in by explaining characters and backstory, but like Peter himself at the end of the book, I was left disappointed: 'It was just a ghost. Part of me had wanted a working Artificial General Intelligence'. Once again, the magic ruins the plot and the humour is quite literally based on Adams' novels. Also, Peter is now living with one of the river goddesses who is heavily pregnant with twins and the domesticity also bored me silly.

The cover of my library copy does indeed glow in the dark, though. That's cool. ( )

Peter Grant, formally on suspension after the last book, goes undercover in a secretive tech company that styles everything after The Hitchhiker's Guide. Fun.
read 2/8/2024 ( )

It's great how Aaronovitch has kept his character, Peter Grant, maturing throughout the series. Long gone is the diffident Cockney lad who hardly knew how to manufacture a were light without burning the place down. He still works hard at his magic spells but he's up to doing fourth order spells on the fly now. And he's about to become a father!

As this book starts out we see Peter going for a job interview as a security person at a technology company having been dismissed from the London police force. Fortunately, it only takes a couple of chapters to learn that Peter is undercover. It all started with a theft of a piece of music for a fairground steam organ that Peter had investigated. The music was about Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and perhaps one of the first computer programmers. The music was meant for an engine that might have been invented by Charles Babbage. It is now suspected that Terrence Skinner, owner of the Serious Cybernetics Company, has his hands on that machine and is holding it in his company's building in London. So, Peter is tasked to find out if it exists and what Skinner might be planning to do with it. As Peter gets deeper into the geek culture he finds that other parties may be after the same thing and he believes that Skinner may be planning to develop a genuine working artificial intelligence. If he succeeds then what would that mean for mankind and the planet? Peter and the rest of the crew don't really want to find out which means finding the mechanism and taking it out of Skinner's control.

Now that Peter is living with Beverley, River Goddess, and soon to be mother of his child, he has other responsibilities. He seems to be able to handle them, along with his police responsibilities. ( )

It took me way to long to read this book but it was certainly not the books fault. I have been u focused and unable to read. Pandemic brain at its best. Still liked the book and will continue with the series. ( )

Ich weiß nicht genau, warum, aber der Fall hat mir noch so sehr gefallen, wie die Anderen. Auch wenn die Angewohnheit des Unternehmens, seine Mitarbeiter Mäuse zu nennen, das Lesen mehr als witzig gemacht hat. ( )