False Value notes
Okay, False Value, notes as I went along. This is not an intelligent review of the book, this is more a look inside my head as I was reading it :-P
- okay Peter and Stephen doing the fake-kissing thing to avoid being caught snooping, plus some of the later bits, there's definite ship potential here if anyone's interested
- so this is almost a Librarians crossover with new characters? I mean, there's a TV show about the Librarians who travel around semi-legally stealing magical artefacts and stashing them away in their archives... I've often thought it would make a good ROL crossover. Omitting the violet goo is a smart choice
- Peter making threats to Stephen confident in the knowledge that Nightingale is sitting right behind him is fantastic
- Nightingale training Peter on demon traps by HIDING FAKE ONES ALL AROUND THE FOLLY. I just. I suppose I should have seen this coming given that Nightingale tested his new magic-proof cell by locking Peter in it, but. There is an entire GENRE of fic in Nightingale's experiental style of teaching. Also obviously someone whose kinks go that way will have to put this together with the fact that Peter's been practicing getting out of having his hands tied.
- okay, I want to know how the Lovecraftian Jellyfish Monster made a demon trap. And I liked the details about exactly what happens inside a demon trap, and also the brief mention of magically possessed axes, rings and books at various places in the book are going to make great fic plot bunny fodder
- someone's going to write Peter taking Nightingale round the Science Museum, right? I haven't been for a couple of years, but I did spend a very long time with a space-mad five-year-old in the space gallery then. And there's the earthquake simulator, and the whole floor of fun experiments for tiny and not-so-tiny tots...
- UNDERCOVER FIC. This book is a PETER WORKING UNDERCOVER FIC and I love it. Nightingale doesn't approve!
- Peter is going to be so shit at being undercover. Peter is a community police officer. Peter likes people. They like him. This is going to be heartbreaking for him
- Nightingale reworking his syllabus for Abigail and testing it out on the legal group first!
- Guleed! Interviewing undercover Peter! And struggling with Michael's family oh Sahra
- Tyrel and Stacy, I thought that invite to dinner was going to be him accusing Peter of being undercover but no, it's much worse: they're just really good nice people giving troubled teens a second chance (and incidentally I liked Peter's empathy with Baz later on, everything that reminds me of that bit in LS where he's remembering what Inspector Neblett taught him about how pitiful criminals are) and Peter's got to betray their trust
- Mrs Chin and Stephen eat and drink under Beverley and Peter's roof. Nobody ever seems to mention obligations and it doesn't seem to stop them attacking Peter later on. Are they under an obligation to Bev and if so will she call it in?
- Foxglove running in naked except for a sheet while Peter's having breakfast, tearing around the room and charging out again is the thing in this story that is most likely to happen to me IRL, only normally I'm expected to get up and make my son put some clothes on when he does that and it's his duvet rather than a sheet. It filled me with delight to see it in the story, though
- okay I think a valid reading of this book is that Nightingale is pining for Peter. I am surprised that I think this because I have never seen this before in the text in the other books, it's always been Peter admiring Nightingale all the time. But there's something about Nightingale's attitude to Peter in this which really pings me this way, it's written quite a few degrees more intensely than in the previous books, his worry about Peter is obvious and he's always right there being Peter's backup in a way that he wasn't before
- Mrs Chin objecting to sitting on a stakeout for two hours without a toilet break is a MOOD. In the same vein, I appreciated the pelvic floor exercises Bev does
- Nightingale walks in and says Hello my name is Thomas Nightingale, and that threw me at first, and then I realised: that name is a weapon in its own right, people must surrender when they hear that all the time
- Mrs Chin going toe to toe with Nightingale is just incredible, we now have a magic battle to top the one with Varvara. As is the ending: the dust settles and Nightingale has her chivalrously in a chair while he stands behind her ready to kick some serious formae if she twitches. And then replaying the battle to spot the discrepancies, that was such a Nightingale thing
- oh yeah she is totally the Chief Librarian. I adore how protective Stephen is of her. Librarian friends, is there some secret meaning in her serial number being 020.131? That looks like a Dewey classification number to me...
- using Foxglove to make the magic-proof cells at the Folly HOLY SHIT PETER. How does Peter feel being down there? Somehow I don't think that Nightingale tested these ones by locking Peter inside.
- ARRESTING THE AI! Go Peter go, I love how Peter goes from 'is this a sentient being? yes? okay then I don't have to kill you, I can arrest you instead'
- the final battle is a bit muted, compared to the Nightingale-Mrs Chin fight earlier. I like the description of the allokosmos coming in at the corners of the room, and I guess now we know what it was that Peter nearly fell into back at the start in RoL when he does the ritual in the graveyard and opens some kind of portal.
- and there's more of Nightingale being worried about Peter, I am loving this new dynamic and I'm trying to work out if it's because Nightingale hasn't recovered from Peter being kidnapped and then handcuffed to Chorley while Lesley shot Chorley, or whether Nightingale was always this worried about Peter only until we got this new post-therapy Peter he didn't notice
- Peter sending Stephen and Mrs Chin away with fleas in their ears is fantastic
- holy shit now Nightingale's telling Peter about Ettersberg and the Black Library, and yeah, that was always going to be the big question, isn't it: who's read it, and why. Lots more details here for the fandom to chew on
So, all in all, yeah, I really enjoyed this. I adored Stephen and Mrs Chin and the contrast between how they handle magic and how the Folly works, I loved meeting characters who don't know who Peter and Nightingale are in advance, I liked all the tech company stuff (it reminded me in some ways of Murder Must Advertise, the same undercover-in-a-weird-workplace vibe), I loved the whole undercover thing, it was a great romp and a lot of fun to read.
Crossposted at https://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/169303.html. There are
comments there.
- okay Peter and Stephen doing the fake-kissing thing to avoid being caught snooping, plus some of the later bits, there's definite ship potential here if anyone's interested
- so this is almost a Librarians crossover with new characters? I mean, there's a TV show about the Librarians who travel around semi-legally stealing magical artefacts and stashing them away in their archives... I've often thought it would make a good ROL crossover. Omitting the violet goo is a smart choice
- Peter making threats to Stephen confident in the knowledge that Nightingale is sitting right behind him is fantastic
- Nightingale training Peter on demon traps by HIDING FAKE ONES ALL AROUND THE FOLLY. I just. I suppose I should have seen this coming given that Nightingale tested his new magic-proof cell by locking Peter in it, but. There is an entire GENRE of fic in Nightingale's experiental style of teaching. Also obviously someone whose kinks go that way will have to put this together with the fact that Peter's been practicing getting out of having his hands tied.
- okay, I want to know how the Lovecraftian Jellyfish Monster made a demon trap. And I liked the details about exactly what happens inside a demon trap, and also the brief mention of magically possessed axes, rings and books at various places in the book are going to make great fic plot bunny fodder
- someone's going to write Peter taking Nightingale round the Science Museum, right? I haven't been for a couple of years, but I did spend a very long time with a space-mad five-year-old in the space gallery then. And there's the earthquake simulator, and the whole floor of fun experiments for tiny and not-so-tiny tots...
- UNDERCOVER FIC. This book is a PETER WORKING UNDERCOVER FIC and I love it. Nightingale doesn't approve!
- Peter is going to be so shit at being undercover. Peter is a community police officer. Peter likes people. They like him. This is going to be heartbreaking for him
- Nightingale reworking his syllabus for Abigail and testing it out on the legal group first!
- Guleed! Interviewing undercover Peter! And struggling with Michael's family oh Sahra
- Tyrel and Stacy, I thought that invite to dinner was going to be him accusing Peter of being undercover but no, it's much worse: they're just really good nice people giving troubled teens a second chance (and incidentally I liked Peter's empathy with Baz later on, everything that reminds me of that bit in LS where he's remembering what Inspector Neblett taught him about how pitiful criminals are) and Peter's got to betray their trust
- Mrs Chin and Stephen eat and drink under Beverley and Peter's roof. Nobody ever seems to mention obligations and it doesn't seem to stop them attacking Peter later on. Are they under an obligation to Bev and if so will she call it in?
- Foxglove running in naked except for a sheet while Peter's having breakfast, tearing around the room and charging out again is the thing in this story that is most likely to happen to me IRL, only normally I'm expected to get up and make my son put some clothes on when he does that and it's his duvet rather than a sheet. It filled me with delight to see it in the story, though
- okay I think a valid reading of this book is that Nightingale is pining for Peter. I am surprised that I think this because I have never seen this before in the text in the other books, it's always been Peter admiring Nightingale all the time. But there's something about Nightingale's attitude to Peter in this which really pings me this way, it's written quite a few degrees more intensely than in the previous books, his worry about Peter is obvious and he's always right there being Peter's backup in a way that he wasn't before
- Mrs Chin objecting to sitting on a stakeout for two hours without a toilet break is a MOOD. In the same vein, I appreciated the pelvic floor exercises Bev does
- Nightingale walks in and says Hello my name is Thomas Nightingale, and that threw me at first, and then I realised: that name is a weapon in its own right, people must surrender when they hear that all the time
- Mrs Chin going toe to toe with Nightingale is just incredible, we now have a magic battle to top the one with Varvara. As is the ending: the dust settles and Nightingale has her chivalrously in a chair while he stands behind her ready to kick some serious formae if she twitches. And then replaying the battle to spot the discrepancies, that was such a Nightingale thing
- oh yeah she is totally the Chief Librarian. I adore how protective Stephen is of her. Librarian friends, is there some secret meaning in her serial number being 020.131? That looks like a Dewey classification number to me...
- using Foxglove to make the magic-proof cells at the Folly HOLY SHIT PETER. How does Peter feel being down there? Somehow I don't think that Nightingale tested these ones by locking Peter inside.
- ARRESTING THE AI! Go Peter go, I love how Peter goes from 'is this a sentient being? yes? okay then I don't have to kill you, I can arrest you instead'
- the final battle is a bit muted, compared to the Nightingale-Mrs Chin fight earlier. I like the description of the allokosmos coming in at the corners of the room, and I guess now we know what it was that Peter nearly fell into back at the start in RoL when he does the ritual in the graveyard and opens some kind of portal.
- and there's more of Nightingale being worried about Peter, I am loving this new dynamic and I'm trying to work out if it's because Nightingale hasn't recovered from Peter being kidnapped and then handcuffed to Chorley while Lesley shot Chorley, or whether Nightingale was always this worried about Peter only until we got this new post-therapy Peter he didn't notice
- Peter sending Stephen and Mrs Chin away with fleas in their ears is fantastic
- holy shit now Nightingale's telling Peter about Ettersberg and the Black Library, and yeah, that was always going to be the big question, isn't it: who's read it, and why. Lots more details here for the fandom to chew on
So, all in all, yeah, I really enjoyed this. I adored Stephen and Mrs Chin and the contrast between how they handle magic and how the Folly works, I loved meeting characters who don't know who Peter and Nightingale are in advance, I liked all the tech company stuff (it reminded me in some ways of Murder Must Advertise, the same undercover-in-a-weird-workplace vibe), I loved the whole undercover thing, it was a great romp and a lot of fun to read.
Crossposted at https://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/169303.html. There are
comments there.