Winter’s Gifts

Rivers of London, Book 3

By: Ben Aaronovitch

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins

Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

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 - poor narration

Love Ben’s books but sadly this narrator isn’t the best person to bring them to life. Hopefully will improve and get pronunciation and character differentiation more on point in the future since I know she’s a talented voice actor.

Narrator could have been better

The story itself was fascinating. Totally in line with the previous Rivers of London series. It’s too bad that the narration was not as high quality. I understand the use of a female voice for Agent Reynolds but wish they could have brought in Kobna Holdbrook-Smith to do the voice of Peter Grant at least and perhaps some of the other male voices. In my opinion Penelope Rawlins just doesn’t have the same level of talent in doing multiple voices especially male voices. I look forward to reading this book in print as I feel that I will enjoy the story much more without the distraction of the disappointing narration.

I love the world Ben Aaronovitch has created.

I have really enjoyed the stories that have branched into other countries. Still Peter and Beverly and the Nightingale remain my favorite.

He Tried….. but this Book was not up to his normal standards

This is the ONLY story in this entire series that I have rated less than a 5. I could see that B.A. tried to branch out, but this story just does not have the “magic” (no pun intended) of the rest of the series.
Lastly, I did not enjoy listening to Ms. Rawlins, At. All. It’s funny because KHS’s American accent is atrocious 🤣, but he’s still the GOAT when it comes to the Rivers of London Series.

Diverting novella with good narration

I won’t get into the details on the story - just say I enjoyed it. Not my top read in this universe but entertaining. I appreciate that the author explores some of the side characters in the Rivers of London series in his shorter books. It enriches the world he’s created.

My main point is that, contrary to some other reviewers’ comments, I found the narrator to be very good. Yes, I suppose choosing a Brit rather than an American to narrate an American character is counterintuitive, but I thought with one minor odd pronunciation of the word “parka” (a word which gets a lot of use in the book), the reader sounded just fine. For context, I’m American myself though no expert in regional accents. I love Kobna Holdbrooke-Smith’s narration of the Peter Grant-centered Rivers books, but really struggled with his Kimberly voice, which felt genuinely off to my admittedly untrained ear. For a book that features Kimberly, I am glad Penelope Rawlins was the narrator. I just wanted to weigh in for anyone put off listening to the book based on negative reviews of the narrator.

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

Narration does, indeed, drag this down

Could it really be that bad, as bad as pretty much everyone else has said here in the reviews? Yes. Yes, it can. I tried listening to this and was certainly interested to get a story from another point of view/character in this series but I just couldn't. Narration was annoying and the overuse of 'my Mama says' by the author was just not enjoyable. Returned this one and will look for the story in print.

OK, but I miss Peter Grantt

The narrator was just OK. The story was also OK. But not nearly as fun and interesting as Peter Grant! I do hope Aaronovitch with write some REAL books with Peter Grant and all the others in the Folly!

Good story

I really enjoyed this character yet the narrator‘s American accent was just a bit off. She miss, pronounced words, and especially, as was said many times before in prior reviews it is a parka, not a Parker. I appreciate a book that mixes someone that has Christian faith that allows for the unexplainable and science to come in without trying to explain it off under some Christian principles. It just goes to show that you can have faith and believe in other things as well or realize there are other things out there. The story was a good one and I really enjoyed how they did not make the Native Americans the bad people in this story and that it was actually the white colonizers that were doing the damage before they were stopped and then again when they tried to come back. I really would like to see more books written from agent Kimberly Reynolds point of view. I think it’s a good way to get some American stories out there, and would be a great companion series to the Rivers of London. I didn’t like her character much in the Rivers books, but this change my mind about her. I will say that this narrator should never try to do Peter Grants voice ever again. It just made me miss Kobna. And although this narrator did a decent job and is probably wonderful with other things, I think a true American narrating as agent Kimberly Reynolds would be better.

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.