Review: BROKEN HOMES

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch
Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Book 4 of Peter Grant series
Genre: urban fantasy, police investigation
Format: audiobook

About Broken Homes:

A mutilated body in Crawley. Another killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil; an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man? Or just a common or garden serial killer?

Before PC Peter Grant can get his head round the case a town planner going under a tube train and a stolen grimoire are adding to his case-load.

So far so London.

But then Peter gets word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle, on a housing estate designed by a nutter, built by charlatans and inhabited by the truly desperate.

Is there a connection?

And if there is, why oh why did it have to be South of the River?

Source: Info in the About Broken Homes was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16078584-broken-homes on 29/07/2013.

Review:

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narration took a lot of getting used to. A lot! And it has been a while since the last book. A year, in fact. So I was trying to get used to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith all over again. And it took a good part of three quarters of the book before I finally did. And I had to borrow the hardcopy from the library while I was getting used to the narration. But I really do like Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's accent impersonations! They sound very authentic! But the thing I like best about this book is the humour between the pages! Awesome sauce!! My sides hurt!! Plus the plot building is solid and substantial with nice twists. However, having said that, this is probably the book which garnered the lowest rating yet in the whole series. This is mainly because of the ending. It bordered on being a cliffhanger. And I don't like cliffhangers! It left so many threads in the story hanging! And I also like seeing justice done. This is a police story, for goodness sake! A fictional one. So I was expecting the murders to get justice! I was indignant!! But I'm still kinda hoping that it'll get some answers in the next book. But having said that, my interest in this series is seriously waning... I might borrow this book from the library if ever I decide to continue reading this series rather than buying it.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Ending = 3
World building = 5
Cover art = 2
Pace = (10 hrs and 17 mins listening time)
Plot = 4
Narrator = 4

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Rivers Of London Series / Peter Grant Series:


Thank you to RCT Library for lending me a copy of this book.

FTC Disclosure:
The hardback copy was borrowed from the library. The audiobook was purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.