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

Format: Audio (BorrowBox)
Read: August 2025

I have read so many of these books in short order that I’m not completely sure if I didn’t enjoy this as much because I’m getting tired of the series, or if it’s a comment on the quality of this book. There have been previous books I didn’t like so much because the ingredient mix was wrong for me, but this one does have all the things I usually find tasty.

I have to confess that I personally don’t find Peter all that charming as a character, and I just sort of put up with him because everything is told from his POV, and I have to! If I were in this story, I’d have more of a Guleed or Lesley (before she turned) approach to policing! It might be that I’m tiring of Peter and his schtick.

It also might be that this book is overstuffed with characters and plots. There is a lot going on within the police force and The Folly, whereby there are now so many side characters that I stopped trying to remember them. Now add to that a new group of practitioners – Patric Gale and friends – as ‘afterschool’ trainees coming in. I had completely forgotten who he was by the end of the book and was confused when he was brought up again!

Magic being some kind of state secret that the general populace is unaware of is also really stretching credulity. Every book we meet a new cast of characters that know all about everything, and Peter will cause more property damage or explosions or magic fights right out in the open. The number of people associated with the MET who know at the point makes it unlikely that no leaks in the media would have happened!

This book does continue Martin Chorley’s story and brings it to a conclusion, which is good because it’s dragged on for seven books! It has plenty of Lesley, which I love. I’m actually starting to wish I could be in Lesley’s POV instead because she’s so much more sensible, and I really want to know what she is up to!

I would say the climax to this story was fine but suffers from having too much stuffed into it (off the top of my head: Punch, so much stuff about King Arthur, bells, the fae folk, magic dimension bubbles, chimera, Lesley’s face, Chorley’s dead daughter (from The Hanging Tree), Punch’s daughter, more Rivers, more Roman times!), and ultimately is another case of Peter getting saved by the Rivers, and I think I tuned it out a bit while I was cleaning the shower drain! By the end of it, Chorley just became a confused nutcase instead of a calculating villain, and I didn’t find his motives believable and really, I didn’t care all that much about anything that happened.

Peter also makes a new fae friend called Foxglove, who appears to be the same type of being as whatever Molly is. And Abigail is now apparently a permanent fixture. From what I understand, you have to read the graphic novels to know what is going on there, and why she talks to foxes. There is also obviously something going on with Guleed and China Town that I assume happened in a different book. Annoying. I believe this is a trend that continues in the series from this point, and if anything is going to make me give up on it, it’ll be half the story existing in a different series of books! I’m finding this annoying enough, reading X-Men comics at the moment, there is no way I’m going to go and read graphic novels or novellas for this series. I’m not into it that much.

In conclusion, I am finding the series is stretched too thin at this point. It’s overcrowded with characters, and most of them are flat, with only Holdbrook-Smith’s incredible narration that gives them any life at all. I’ve read seven books now, and I still barely know anything about Nighingale, and it doesn’t seem like I am going to! Each book waters down The Folly further with more characters instead of honing in on the most interesting one!

The book ends with Peter on suspension, and Beverley (who has gained no character depth in 7 books) telling him she’s pregnant. I will read the next book because I already have it on loan… that might be my last one if things don’t get significantly shaken up.