Tales from the Folly

This is a short book of slight tales. If you don't expect much, then you won't be disappointed. I read the rather mixed reviews in advance, so I didn't expect much, and I enjoyed them quite well.

We get six short stories from Peter Grant's viewpoint, then four short stories and three ‘moments' from various other people's viewpoints.

When it comes to short stories, there's an old American saying that's apt: “It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.” The best short stories can stand up to novels, because there's plenty of fight in the dog: they're compact but powerful. You read them, and they stick in the mind long afterwards.

Aaronovitch can cope with writing short stories, but he doesn't shine at it. His short stories have some fight in them, but no more than you might expect from the size of the dog.

Really, this whole book is probably best seen as a collection of outtakes: extra scenes that don't fit into a novel and would otherwise be discarded. If you don't bother with them, you're not missing much, but if you fancy some outtakes, then here they are.

Good points:

1. On average, they're relatively cheerful.

2. They're varied, and you get various different points of view.

3. One of them is from Abigail's point of view, and more of Abigail is always good. The other viewpoints we get are from Sommer, Winter, Croft, Nightingale in 1966, Reynolds, and a nameless person who doesn't appear in the novels (as far as I know).