Winter’s Gifts

Rivers of London, Book 3

De: Ben Aaronovitch

Narrado por: Penelope Rawlins

The brand new novella in the Sunday Times #1 bestselling Rivers of London series.

THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY ACROSS THE POND . . .

When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an 'X-Ray Sierra India' incident, the operator doesn't understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does.

That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town—and there's no sign of Henderson.

Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbors report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising—cutting off the town, with no way in or out . . .

Something terrible is awakening. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases—a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness—Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today . . .

©2023 Ben Aaronovitch (P)2023 Tantor

Good story.

I'm a fan of the River of London series. This story was good but not a favorite. I had to force myself to finish listening because of the narrator. Her pronunciation of "parka" and "library" were painful. Both words were over used. And the voices she used for the male characters were horrible.

Enjoyable foray into peripheral character

I really enjoy the RoL series and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith has set an amazing example of audiobook narration. So - the story here is great and fun and the narration absolutely does not do it justice.

A good start to explore other countries mentioned

A good start for stories of this series in other countries. Involving native Americans in North American cultures is an added interest. The only negative was Agent Reynolds Christian ideology and mother. In itself ok but it got old. Hammering that Kimberly is quirky.

Story YAY, narrator NAY

I look forward to any Aaronovitch Rivers series, but the narrator’s lack of vocal differentiation between male characters was lacking. Also disappointing was the poor impression of Peter - dialect was totally wrong. Lastly, mispronouncing parka [paar kuh] as parker could have been a drinking game :P

Narrator is the problem

The story was a perfectly fine outing it the Peter Grant universe, Kimberly is not my favorite character, but I like her well enough. Really, what brings this audiobook down is the narration for me.

And no, I'm not about to rant about the way she said "Parker" for parka every time - the too many and too few Rs all in the wrong places in words regardless of the accent any given character was supposed to have is pretty normal for UK actors trying US accents. You get used to it. (I'm sure it's just as obvious and grating in reverse.)

It feels like A Choice made to go with a "tough as nails, hard-boiled detective" sound for Kimberly, who, if she was just starting at college in 2001, would have been in her early 30s at the time of this installment. At points when she reader seemed to relax into the voice a bit, it sounded much better to my ear, less forced, because Kimberly isn't world weary yet! The voice she puts on at the start just sounds older than the character.

Accent choices for a lot of the other characters added to the sense of not-right. Kimberly's mom is given a southern accent (which seems plausible enough? But iirc she's midwestern, not southern) but Kimberly herself has not a trace of one? But Kimberly also doesn't speak like she's from DC or upstate NY, either. The librarian's southern accent is an interesting choice given she's up from New Orleans, and Louisiana has a very distinctive accent, but hers is also described as high class (I think this may be the author ascribing slightly more British class signifiers on American regional accents? But she may not be from New Orleans originally. I'm curious what accent he had in mind when writing.) There's a bit of Minnesota/Wisconsin type accent thrown to one of the locals, too, but I think the real thing we come down to is that the voice actress isn't as strong at US accents as she needed to be for this particular piece and perhaps was missing the back story of some characters - why else give Peter Grant, Londoner with a London accent, such a standard RP/BBC type accent?

It's not that any one accent or voice was wrong, it was that they ALL were, but were Inconsistent in just how exactly they were wrong.