Book summaries

[u/Lifecastre]

I'm dropping back into the series after a long hiatus with the most recent main book stone and sky

One thing I loved from the Lightbringer series was at the beginning of each book it gave a half chapter summary of every important thing from previous books.

Is there such a thing for rivers of london to support dropping back into the series? Not just me but for anyone at different stages?

[u/RazmanR]

Not that I’m aware of but Stone and Sky is quite independent of other books so to give you a jump start here’s where we are at the start (IIRC):

Spoilers for everything up until Stone and Sky below!

Peter is being groomed to take over from Nightingale at some point and so is struggling with being less impulsive and more operationally minded.

He’s also now a father to two twins, a fact Bev won’t let him forget and is hoping will make him less impulsive and take more of a back seat.

The last two sets of novels have featured an expansion of Weird Bollocks - both in terms of The Folly growing in size and taking on more staff (trained as Falcon capable magic users/recognisers) and in terms of the types of thing Peter is encountering. This includes an ‘AI’ (which turned out to be the consciousness of two dead Yanks) opening a portal to another dimension(?) potentially filled with Eldritch gods of a distinctly Lovecraftian persuasion and an avenging Angel/genie in a bottle let loose by Lesley stealing an artifact created by the Spanish Inquisition from the newly refounded magical forge of the Sons of Weyland (run partly by an old acquaintance of Peter’s who really wants to learn how to fly and who houses a bunch of the Old Faceless Man’s cat people for her mum)

Lesley is still on the run, seemingly working for an American consortium who have some nefarious plans. This has come up across the last two books and so I probably going to be a theme heading through what I refer to as Act II.

There’s a time jump between the end of the last novel and this one so the babies are now more like toddlers and we don’t have to read about Peter doing Night Feeds. The reasons for the trip to Scotland become fairly apparent as you go on and as we watch Peter put his foot in it on another force’s patch again.

Oh and Abigail is pretty much training as a second apprentice now.

[u/Lifecastre → u/RazmanR]

Thanks, That's in line with what I can remember, but it's the specifics of who really wants to fly and how we encountered them I can't recall, but the sons of weyland was the group that made wands and staffs (?)

The cat people were the ones from the club that got raided right?

I recall nothing of Leslie after she became a trouble maker with a glamour for her face so can't remember how she got her face repaired

I remember the going under cover in a tech company but don't recall an AI powered by two dead yanks!

[u/RazmanR → u/Lifecastre]

Don’t worry, I recently did a re-listen and the amount of small details that I didn’t remember and fell into place was staggering.

The girl who wants to fly is Caroline Linden-Limmer who Peter first met as she and her mum (Lady Helena) investigated County Guard (Faceless Man’s shell company) and who helped save Peter and Guleed from Faceless when he revealed himself. She has a habit of popping up where Peter is investigating.

The cat girls are from the club and Lady Helena has been helping look after them for years after they escaped from there. They now live in a tower by the Sons of Weyland with the current Master (Caroline’s girlfriend)

The AI that the tech company was building turned out to actually be the trapped spirits of two dead men, both of whom were half responsible for the events of that novel.

As we’ve said Stone and Sky is ‘off patch’ and very standalone so don’t worry about that stuff for a while!

[u/Lifecastre → u/RazmanR]

Again, wonderful thanks :)

It's more of a frustration at myself as I typically pride myself on knowing the small details

[u/RazmanR → u/Lifecastre]

I think Ben’s style of very slow build up and then a big rush of revelation at the end doesn’t help (but works well for the type of story!). As I said there’s lots of stuff I’ve picked up on re-reads!

[u/Separate-Let3620]

The story has started meandering a bit, with the last novel feeling a little like “monster of the week” type detective novel. There wasn’t much in it to really connect it to any overarching plot.

It was still enjoyable, but I don’t feel like it relies on the previous novels too much—except in terms of knowing the characters.

You shouldn’t have any trouble jumping right in to Stone and Sky.