False Value (Rivers of London #8) by Ben Aaronovitch

Format: Audio (BorrowBox)
Read: August 2025

I struggled through Lies Sleeping when it had the elements that I usually enjoy, and now False Value has proven I’m done with the series.

Things didn’t get off to a good start with an unnecessarily confusing dual timeline narrative for the first section of this one. It opens with Peter ostensibly no longer working for the police and starting a new job as a security officer for a tech firm. Then it switched back to events that led to this. This was confusing – especially on audio – and a rather feeble attempt at inserting some narrative tension. Of course, Peter had not quit the police! It was fucking obvious he was just undercover, so I found this an irksome – and honestly boring – way to start the story!

Then come the endless and relentless Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy references. I like HHGTG as much as the next sci-fi fan, but come on, after the first 4, I was groaning. I suppose this is the fault of the billionaire character Terrence Skinner and his lame sense of humour, but then it was Ben Aaronovitch that fucking wrote it!

The whole plot here was – as I am coming to realise is always the case – just OK. As usual, the climax was over in a flash and felt unsatisfactory.  I don’t think there was really a lot to this one. There felt like a lot of padding added with Peter’s home life and mucking about with rivers.

I complained in the last book that there are now too many characters! Well, we get more, and there are yet more Americans, none of which are Kobnah’s best accents, so they’re always jarring! Great. At least Peter seems annoyed about them, too. You know what I want instead of adding endless new magical factions from around the world?! More history of the Folly, more background on Molly and Foxglove, more Nightingale for fucks sake!!

I am tired of Aaronvitch tossing in half-baked ideas and characters like set dressing and never developing anything. I look back on 8 books and struggle to find the character development! In fact, the only character I feel like has developed is Lesley May, and we still only got half of that story.  This includes Peter! He at least no longer mentally undresses every woman he sees, but he’s still lacking any emotional life! He’s supposed to love Bev, I guess, but I don’t feel it because neither of them is any more than a comic book sketch. He’s expecting twins as a first-time parent and never spares a thought for what that’s going to mean! Shouldn’t he be terrified?  Especially given how dangerous his job is?! He nearly dies in this book (and every book), and no thought about the impact that might have on his new family.

Maybe Guleed has developed, and maybe Abigail, but in different fucking books! It’s all off-screen. It’s also annoying me how much stuff that presumably happened in the comics and novellas is referenced.

Plus, the whole thing with Bev continues to annoy me. In this on, there was some shoehorning in of domestic life that I found unconvincing – because if Peter is still undeveloped, Bev is basically a pregnant mannequin. There was some stuff about her river-goddess powers and her acolyte, ceremonies and powers that felt too late (again, this is book 8!) in the series (and their relationship) and maybe a little ret-conny.

Ultimately, I realised I don’t care about any of this. I wasn’t engaged listening; even Kobnah’s incredible narration skills couldn’t make this entertaining.

I haven’t reserved any more from the library! I think I’m done… Unless I get really desperate for an audiobook!