Reviews with content warning for Violence - Slow Horses

Brilliant as an audiobook - Sean Barrett has the perfect world weary tone.
Both sharply funny and despairingly bleak. The unendearing characters have one thing in common, they're where they are because they have screwed up. Royally.
It's hard to care about anyone in the book (except one), but you can't help but be fascinated by all of them.
Definite edge of your seat finish.
Next one please!

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stanro's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I am enjoying this. British spooks marginalised in Slough House rather than sacked, they retain a dream, an almost certainly hopeless dream, of returning to real spooking. The setup is well done, the characters and plot well mapped. The occasional turn of phrase, often sardonic, makes me pause, and sometimes makes me laugh out loud.

“Even when he was any good, he wasn’t any good.”

But this isn’t just “any good.” It’s very, very good.

The first two books have led to two seasons (I hope only so far) of an excellent adaptation on AppleTV, called Slow Horses.

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maggies's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A spy caper with suitable action and intrigue. The Apple+ show is faithful to the book, I think, which was a happy surprise. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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inirac's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The audiobook reader wasn’t my favorite. With all the scene cuts it was sometimes hard to tell who was talking.

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sufubr's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Good start to the series, will continue reading

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uranaishi's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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meganpbennett's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I picked this up on a whim, and later learned that my mom really likes the series and was surprised that I hadn't heard of it before then.

We open with River making a mistake that gets him sent to Slough House, with the Slow Horses. A time later, things start slowly happening, with a journalist being investigated. This section is very very slow, and the timeline is so convoluted as to be "wibbly wobbly", making it very hard to figure out what's happening in the present time or what happened in the past, or even, what's not happening, what didn't happen.

The kidnapping and the actual plot involving who the kid is and why he was kidnapped is awful and many sections seemed unnecessary.

I found the first half far too slow, and the second half was way too full of sections where a character would say that he knew things and then the next sentence would be "so he told them".

The character's names were far too similar; I gave up around the middle of the book ever figuring out who was who and why I should care about them. The writing was decent and the thriller aspect was good, but the pacing was way off, and the "so he told them" lines started getting frustrating very early on.

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