Whispers Under Ground

"Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge? The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all."This series does what most urban fantasies avoid¹ - it seamlessly integrates the 'urban' and the 'fantastical' parts, creating a lovely well-crafted enjoyable reading experience that remains grounded in reality, with just the right touch of whimsy to keep it moving along, *nothing to see here*. (Don't you just loooove my pathetic attempts at police humor? [...]

Well, I was going to work on my paper today. But then this arrived in the mail, hardcover & signed, direct from London. How could I resist? Within pages I was chuckling aloud, but also relishing the developing feeling of danger.I can tell you now what will happen. Someday, I'm going to plan a trip to London, and like a complete book nerd, I will attempt to trace down the steps Peter Grant takes in solving these cases. Yes, the books are that good, and the only things hindering my complete un [...]

My review of the storyThoughts for the audio version narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith:Brilliant. There's nothing more I can say. I wanted to sit and binge-listen, but was afraid my muscles would atrophy during the hours it would take to listen at normal speed. In the third book, Leslie's voice is more intelligible, presumably the result of her surgeries. Voicing of Zach the half-fae had me laughing. Thanks to Dr. Walid, I'm pretty sure I could do a Scottish brogue if I tried. The voicing of the [...]

Onvan : Whispers Under Ground (Peter Grant, #3) - Nevisande : Ben Aaronovitch - ISBN : 575097647 - ISBN13 : 9780575097643 - Dar 418 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2012

3.5ish stars.Another solid entry in a very enjoyable UF series. It's always a pleasure to spend some time with Peter Grant and company. Some things I particularly like about this book:- Leslie is back! And I love that her condition really isn't a huge deal. It wasn't used to turn her into a tragic victim, but it also wasn't glossed over and essentially "fixed" overnight. Cool to see her growing as a practitioner as well.- There are always several great new characters with each installment, this [...]

The advantage of being a semiretired adult is that there is nobody around who can force one to stop reading and go to sleep. The disadvantage of same is the four hours of daylight left that one confronts when crawling out of bed the next afternoonThis series, surer now perhaps of its survival to the end of the broadcast season, seems to be settling in for a good run. More lavish invention with Peter, Lesley, Thomas, the Folly, and of course London. I am happy with this; not for me the readerly d [...]

The train kept a rollin’.And by that I mean the binge reading of Ben Aaronovitch’s PETERGRANTAPALOOZA!Aaronovitch’s 2012 entry into the smoothest UF series since EVER, and the third in the series, may be the best one yet. It’s like if Ben and Neil Gaiman and Tana French sat down over a pint or three and hammered out what is best in life, and no Cohen it’s not “to crush enemy, see him driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the vemen” – it’s to know that this book is on [...]

I've mentioned how these books go down as smooth as jazz, and there's a lot of honesty in it, although the jazz bits are downplayed almost entirely in this book in favor of a little traditional artistic murder.Not that art is being murdered, though that certainly might be the case, or that the artists might be doing the murdering, which also might be the case, or that the murder was done in such a way as to be considered artistic, which is certainly not the case.But above all, this is a fantasti [...]

The discovery of the body of an American student at Baker Street tube station leads Peter Grant, apprentice Wizard on the hunt for a rogue magician both above and below ground. I love these books for their sense of magic as well as their sense of humour. The author keeps coming up with new characters and new magic in the streets of London and it is all very entertaining. Peter and his off-sider Lesley are joined by a FBI agent for this one so it's fun to watch her be initiated into their world.

This is the third book in the series and either they keep getting better or the characters are growing on me the more I read. Or maybe both. Certainly this book was very funny, laugh aloud funny actually usually due to the main character's dry comments about anything and everything. I always love a book set in London especially when it includes lots of facts (and fictions too) about old London. Well this story includes some bits about a very old London indeed so I was well satisfied. I have been [...]

Imagine: You’re in the underground tunnel. You hear whispers. There is somebody lurking in the shadowsThe creature gets nearer and nearer and at last you hear….Hello. It’s me :) just meThat’s the way I feel about this book. The places were so proper and so awesome almost all the way through the book, but I lacked something gripping, suspenseful or more spooky. I longed for more magic.We have a spooky underground even with and strange and some kind of dangerous people, silently lurking in [...]

As I sit here considering this book there's a part of me that wonders why I'm not more taken, more enthusiastic about this series. I can recommend it. It's a good series filled with good writing. I like the understated humor. I like the interaction with the world Aaronovitch has created and it denizens. Somehow with all that I'm always, at best mildly enthusiastic about them. I read the first back when it came out in one of those reader copies with "NOT TO BE SOLD" written all over it. I liked i [...]

I'm really enjoying this series and it really shouldn't come as a surprise as they're a geek's dream come true; at times it feels like there are more geek culture references than there is plot.These books are also really funny, which took me slightly by surprise as nobody had mentioned they were funny in all the various reviews I read before starting the series. I think they'd really appeal to fans of Douglas Adams, Tom Holt or Terry Pratchett.To be honest, I keep almost giving them a five star [...]

Oh, these books are just so much fun. I doubt I will ever stop reading them. The mysteries confuse me (and are mostly forgettable), I still don’t really understand how the magic works (and neither does the main character), and I really have no idea where this is all going. But I enjoy every minute of these books and most of all, this character.What a witty, likable, self-deprecating, fully-realized character Ben Aaronovitch has created here. I could spend hours just reading his random asides a [...]

Ben sure isn't a one trick pony. The third volume of his Peter Grant series is a high point and while not as astounding as the first volume, it's way better than the second and much more fun than any of the others.This time around Peter Grant, PC Magician's Apprentice, faces a mystery of a dead art student in the Tube. Sounds mundane and not Peter Grant at all, but the murder weapon is a shard of magically imbued pottery. So what we get is a wonderful and claustrophobic chase into the literal un [...]

Peter Grant.I could almost make that my entire review.I have a friend I met when we both worked at Barnes & Noble many years ago. She went off to school and then to New York to seek her fortunes, and she is a) blessed with a great many friends and b) an even worse correspondent than I am, so we don't email or call or any of that very often. Now and then, though, if we're going to be in the same city at the same time, we get together, and it's almost as though the time since the last time we [...]

Executive Summary: Another solid entry in this series, and I hope to get to the next book much sooner than I got to this one.Audiobook: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith once again does an excellent job, making this series a must listen for me.Full ReviewYou may not know it from looking at my shelf, but I was never much of a fantasy reader growing up. That changed in college. For several years after college, I didn't read much, but what I read tended to be Urban Fantasy. I just couldn't seem to get enough. [...]

4.5 stars. In which, Peter Grant goes under ground, literally, in pursuit of a murderer. -Lesley's at the Folly, learning from Nightingale. And learning some things faster, though Peter's still better at reading vestigia.-Abigail Kamara from book 2 is back, looking for the Hogwarts Express. I'm so glad she's back.-The wonderful Guleed is back!-We meet Jaget Kumar, a member of the transit police, and keen explorer. I liked him.-The tenacious FBI agent Reynolds is present; not sure what to make of [...]

Damn, I love this series. And damn I love these characters – -Peter, Lesley, Molly, Nightengale and even the little dog Toby. Rarely does an urban fantasy book feel new. There is something so easy going but yet scary about the world Mr. Aaronovitch has created. It is layers of normal society on top of layers of an unknown magical community. These communities co-exist and sometimes collide. This story begins right off from where Moon Over Soho left off. Lesley and Peter (Why do I want to type R [...]

7.5/10The weakest of the three Peter Grant novels I've listened to, just not quite capturing the same excitement the first two provided. Maybe it's me going into them so quick one after the other or maybe it was just a weaker novel. Either way, a weak Peter Grant novel is better than a lot of books out there and I still enjoyed myself!It seems there is some overall story arc being put in the pipelines here and this one hints at things to come and sets up more of the world more whilst still havin [...]

Peter Grant is back: junior policeman on the Metropolitan Force, apprentice wizard and sarcastic jokester. Welcomew to the magical murder mystery tour of London, starting in Hugh Grant's and Julia Robert's favorite neighborhood of Notting Hill but going mostly to the sunken tunnels of a labyrinthine subway system going back to the nineteen century. If in the previous novel, we had a glimpse of Soho nightlife and at the Jazz scene, in this episode we will focus on modern art, small street boutiqu [...]

Posted at The BiblioSanctumWow, never have I snapped up and read all the currently available books in a series so quickly. With my enthusiasm waning for Harry Dresden in light of the new direction the Dresden Files series has taken in the last few books, someone else has recently dethroned him as my favorite leading man in urban fantasy fiction. Peter Grant is my master now!I'm really enjoying this series. I probably didn't like this book as much as the two preceding it, but then again, Rivers o [...]

A very short review this time. Because Peter Grant is part of a wonderful world this book gets 4 stars, as a standalone it would have been a 3. The author continues to weave a great story, but somehow to me it felt less relevant, I wasn't too interested in the magical creatures this time. I liked the characters of Kumar and Guleed, they have a life of their own. Lesley seems a bit fuzzy, I am not getting much of a feel for her.I caught myself hoping for more appearances of the Faceless One and m [...]

Jos jedna odlicna knjiga (bas se pocinjem ponavljati :P) ali ovog puta sa vecim fokusom na misterijom mada magija jos uvek ima svoje mesto ovde. Interakcija medju likovima je prvoklasna, puno humora i podbadanja ali i ozbiljno kada mora biti. Sama prica je isto tako, bavi se ozbiljnim temama ali sa mahumora koji celu stvar cini dosta zabavnijom i prijemcivijom.Tempo je odlican, atmosfera odlicno prenesena sto sve dovodi do toga da te prosto uvuce u sam svet i naravno vuce te da zavrsis knjigu br [...]

So I have to say this one was very enjoyable. Maybe because there is no Peter angst concerning a woman he is interested in. We get more information on how magic works in this world that Peter is in. Also we get some nice police work as well in this one. The Faceless Man is still running amok though, but I was glad to not have this book focus squarely on him. Things I loved:I did enjoy Peter working alongside Lesley. It seems that Lesley is better than Peter at magic, or at least stronger than he [...]

This was also a fun book - and honestly, I keep reading these and thinking that they are really written with a screenplay in mind, and I sure would look forward to watching this as a TV series! The protagonist, Peter Grant, is funny, self effacing and bright but not always quick on the uptake with certain things. He's also got a huge hangup about his friend Lesley's magic-related injury to her face (despite one of the other characters in this story referring to her as "sex on legs"). He's doing [...]

Another irresistibly fast-paced and gripping installment in this series. It was so good to have Lesley back!

3.5 Sterne Vorneweg:Nachdem ich den ersten Band der Reihe ganz in Ordnung fand, habe ich den zweiten Band geradezu verschlungen! Deswegen war ich schon sehr gespannt auf "Ein Wispern unter Baker Street" und hatte auch ein bisschen höhere Erwartungen, leider.Meine Meinung: Bisher hatte ich bei jedem Buch dieser Reihe leichte Startschwierigkeiten. Ich weiß nicht, ob es an dem Schreibstil liegt, oder an etwas anderem, aber ich brauche immer ca. 75 Seiten bis ich einigermaßen in die Handlung hine [...]

If you haven’t yet met Peter Grant, main character of this series, may I suggest that you find the first book (Rivers of London/Midnight Riot) and make his acquaintance. This is urban fantasy, but not like the UF that I usually read. Somehow, the magical elements of Aaronovitch’s fiction just melt into the story and don’t stick out like sore thumbs. Peter is primarily a copper and only secondarily an apprentice wizard. And despite the warnings of his wizardly mentor, Nightingale, Peter con [...]

If Peter Grant was a real guy I would go to London and stalk him for a week just because he's so awesome! :)No seriously, this is the best in the series so far, and I really enjoyed the first two. I'm not a huge fan of London for lots of reasons but I swear this series is changing my mind. The way Aaronovitch talks about the history of the city and how it developed and he slides in that British humour and I find myself wishing I was in London to go visit the places he's talking about! Not only i [...]