Foxglove Summer
978-0575132504
(2013)
(2016)
Foxglove Summer is the fifth novel in the Peter Grant series by English author Ben Aaronovitch, published in 2014 by Gollancz.[1]
Plot
The protagonist Peter Grant is left shaken by the developments at the end of the previous book, the sudden betrayal and defection by a highly valued colleague to whom Grant also had a strong emotional tie. The moping Grant welcomes the chance to leave the familiar grounds of London and travel to rural Herefordshire, where the disappearance of two eleven-year old girls is a media sensation, the focus of an intensive police search - and might have grave magical implications as well.
Grant finds that the tangle of marital and extra-marital relations in a small rural community is not only a matter for gossip, but bears very serious criminal implications, and some supernatural ones as well. He meets with a retired wizard, traumatized by the secret magical battles of World War II, and with the wizard's granddaughter who has a very special affinity with bees. Grant gets into intensive contact with Beverley Brook, the goddess or Genius loci of Beverley Brook, a tributary of the Thames - and learns by personal experience just how rivers gain such gods. He finds that unicorns are all too real and that their horns are deadly weapons; that fairies do exist and even in the 21st century they do sometimes kidnap human children and replace them with changelings; and he meets with a real-life faerie queen, very different from the one imagined by Spenser.
As the ultimate result of all that, Grant faces the prospect of being stuck forever as a captive in the real-life fairyland - an alternative reality or Otherworld where Britain is still covered with a massive unbroken primeval forest, with no sign of the familiar towns and villages. Grant's single, slender hope of escape lies in the lasting magical (or possibly anti-magical) effect of the Roman Empire's engineering projects and of the Romans' habit of imposing themselves on the landscape and building "roads straight as an arrow" wherever they ruled.[2]
Characters
Returning characters
- Police Constable Peter Grant; an officer in the Metropolitan Police and the first official apprentice wizard in sixty years.
- Lesley May; formerly Police Constable in the Metropolitan Police and de facto apprentice to Nightingale; now criminal associate of the faceless man and subject to an internal investigation
- Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale; head of the Folly and the last officially sanctioned English Wizard.
- Molly; The Folly's domestic helper, of unknown species.
- Dr Abdul Haqq Walid; world-renowned gastroenterologist and cryptopathologist.
- Beverley Brook; goddess of a small suburban river and consulting ecologist.
Characters introduced in this novel
- Detective Constable Dominic Croft; a member of the West Mercia Major Crimes Unit assigned as Peter's liaison.
Reception
The book was well-received, with Sci-Fi Pulse praising its "warmth and sly humour", its rich worldbuilding and the plausibility of the police procedure.[3]
- v
- t
- e
- Rivers of London (2011)
- Moon Over Soho (2011)
- Whispers Under Ground (2012)
- Broken Homes (2013)
- Foxglove Summer (2014)
- The Hanging Tree (2016)
- The Furthest Station (2017)
- Lies Sleeping (2018)
- The October Man (2019)
- False Value (2020)
- Tales from the Folly (2020)
- What Abigail Did That Summer (2021)
- Amongst Our Weapons (2022)
- Winter’s Gift (2023)
Bernice Summerfield
- Remembrance of the Daleks (1988)
- Battlefield (1989)
- Transit (1992)
- The Also People (1995)
- So Vile a Sin (1997)
- Genius Loci (2006)
References
- ^ Foxglove Summer. 12 July 2018. ISBN 978-0-575-13252-8.
- ^ Kammartinez (November 2014). "Summer (Vacation) is Over, and It's Time to Move On to Bigger Things – A Review of Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch". Occasionally Random Book Reviews. Retrieved 1 June 2024.
- ^ Freeman, John (7 November 2014). "In Review: Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch". SciFiPulse.Net. Retrieved 1 June 2024.
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