Book Review 2023 #9 - Ben Aaronovitch's The Furthest Station
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Subterranean Press
Publication Date: June 27th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 144 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
When you limit a talented person to one specific thing they tend to get really good at it. Peter should have known all along that making a deal with his cousin Abigail was dangerous. She's almost as cunning as the Fae of legend with their bargains. Never agree to teach someone magic if you don't want to by adding a condition that they can easily meet, like getting a GCSE A Level in Latin. Because Abigail is way better than Peter at Latin. Which is very worrying. Though her age means that he and Nightingale have some time until they have to ask her parents for permission to teach her magic. Of course that would require a lot more explanations, but Peter did promise. Until that time comes Abigail is like the Folly's intern and has become the defacto ghost expert. Being unable to practice magic she's really good at finding the uncanny, and ghosts are the most easily observed of phenomena. And at this moment that phenomena is causing trouble on the London Underground. The Metropolitan Line has had a rash of reports. The problem is their witnesses aren't very helpful. Most people who encounter a ghost tend to forget the incident within minutes of it happening. It's like waking up from a dream, try as hard as you might the dream slips away. So the police get 999 calls that when followed up lead to very confused witnesses who don't even remember calling them. Therefore they must catch a ghost interacting with a member of the public and interview the witness immediately. Which doesn't go as well as they hoped. Walking the trains at night when they're in storage does lead to an interesting discovery though, the ghosts don't appear normal. Or should that be disappear. The ghost Peter encounters has an important message it needs to deliver and then it shatters like porcelain. The next ghost he encounters gives him some more information before shattering as well. This leads them into the archives of the Folly and the County Practitioner for Buckinghamshire, George Buckland, who died in 1815. He lived in Chesham and made rose jars, which were a unique form of ghost trap. But most importantly, Chesham happens to be the terminus of the Metropolitan Line. They might have just found out where their ghost commuters are coming from. Now to find out why.
What I love about this series is that you never know where it's going to go and that's rare for me to actually embrace and enjoy. I'm the kind of person who likes to try to figure out where things are going in books, shows, really, anything, that's why I'm addicted to whodunits, because I don't just want to know I want to figure it out before the killer is revealed. I want to be smarter than everyone else. Which is probably a trait I shouldn't encourage. I should know by now that a series ready to randomly drop in jazz vampires and talking foxes is unpredictable to say the least, but this story in particular was a wonderful surprise. You think it's going to be a simple ghost hunting on the Underground story with Peter and Sergeant Jaget Kumar of the British Transport Police, in a similar vein to them working together in Whispers Under Ground, but then it turns out that the ghosts aren't the problem, they're the messengers making them all red herrings. The ghosts have been haunting the Underground in an attempt to save a life. And while, read chronologically and not by publication date, that means we've basically had three cases of kidnappings in a row, I'll forgive Ben Aaronovitch because of those three stories two of them were amazing and this one at least didn't involve children. Plus this case is building on the lore of ghosts. The fact that to most people they disappear like dreams is fascinating. Like the brain can't cope with this information so it just deletes it. So what does that mean about those who retain the memory of seeing ghosts? Are they more observant or just wired differently when it comes to the uncanny? Also the knowledge that ghosts can be caught and that catching them changes them in some manner. I would literally love to read just like Abigail writing a dissertation on her thoughts of ghosts. Because I'm sure that she's going to study those rose jars that remained and figure out a way to recreate them. Which leads us to George Buckland. His wife, who was creole and from New Orleans, taught him how to make rose jars. Which means there are obviously different sets of skills and beliefs depending on where you've learned or practiced your magic. And while I adore the history of magic as codified by the Folly, it's only been around since 1775 which means even George Buckland himself lived in a world without the Folly for awhile. Which makes you wonder about the really old history. I would just love to read a history of the magical systems of Ben Aaronovitch's world. It could be a couple thousand pages and I would devour them all. Or just let me into the Folly and set me loose in those libraries, I want to know everything. I just love this world so much!
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