What Lies Sleeping in the Rivers of London Quiz

Answer: Brent

The goddess of the river Brent, called Brent, is currently a nine-year-old girl on her human side. Brent was spooked by ghostly horses in her river. Peter and Abigail have searched, but the ghosts have vanished.

Abigail does discover a battle from "The English Civil War" (the Cromwell vs Royalty one) where cavalry were involved. It took place at an appropriate location along the banks of the River Brent. The ghosts turn up later in the story, but earlier in history.

Answer: Holland Park

If you are aware of the tube map of London, then you might have noticed that only one of the options is on the Central Line. Otherwise, it is back to reading the book.

Zach Palmer, part fae, hundred per cent devious and tricky interviewee of the year, has been released after questioning. He is out of custody and Peter is driving him back to whichever place Zach identifies as home. Which may or may not be one that the police are already aware of.

Zach offers this titbit in an attempt to distract Peter's line of questioning about Lesley May. The ghosts in question are Vikings, or at least Norse. He then lets slip a notable element in the plans of the Faceless Man.

Answer: Goat and Crocodile

Walbrook, although a tributary of the tidal River Thames, is not part of the human side of Mama Thames family, although as a river she is family by water. She isn't related to Father Thames either, although she survived the pollution of the Victorian era. Her origins, revealed towards the end of the book, are back in the era of Roman London.

The Goat and Crocodile is identified as being in Shoreditch, and is noted as a pub catering to the demi-monde. As, indeed, is the Chestnut Tree near Marble Arch.

Answer: Drawing

Peter is trapped by a fake police officer in a fake police car driven by one of the Faceless Man's associates. Or possibly it is a real police car driven by a corrupt police officer. Either way, Peter is tricked into getting into the car and is then overpowered.

When he regains consciousness, he is tied up in an unknown building with electrical cables plugged into the mains, which disrupts his spell casting. Then he is shoved into a hole in the ground which he shares with Foxglove.

Foxglove's role is that of guard and reinforcement of the magic negation around Peter that prevents his escape. However, they do develop a rapport which starts when he sees her sketching him.

Answer: "The Silmarillion" (Tolkien)

This is in keeping with what is known of the Faceless Man. In "Broken Homes", he inscribed Tolkien's Elvish runes on a demon trap. The book itself was stolen from a library, near to where the Faceless Man is known to have grown up.

The subsequent book in this series, "False Value", does contain a lot of references to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", notably Vogons and the Serious (Sirius) Cybernetic Corporation.

Answer: Cream puffs

I've yet to find where the talking foxes originate, but they do seem to have greater intelligence than normal and to be larger than the average fox. That said, they also think they are a covert spy ring, although no-one knows who they are reporting to, possibly not even the foxes themselves. Abigail meets them across London on various occasions throughout the books.

Talking foxes also act as informants to Dominic Croft, who first appeared in "Foxglove Summer". As that is set in Herefordshire, it indicates that they are spread across the country.

Back to the appearance in this novel. Abigail and Peter are trying to track the movements of the Faceless Man. Once they get past the terms "mouse time", "first dark" and "second dark", some useful information is obtained. Peter and Abigail discover that two vans left the suspect premises that didn't show up on CCTV.

The cream puffs are from the cuisine of Molly, cook of The Folly. The groundnut chicken is a speciality of Peter's mother.

Answer: Peter Grant

As part of the investigation into the plans of the Faceless Man, Peter has been trying to find out if Merlin and King Arthur were real. He comes up with several possibilities for investigation. Mainly, asking someone who was around at the right time. One such persona is Father Thames. But asking questions of such a powerful river god is not straightforward, or cheap. In an attempt to get around the issue Peter asks Oxley and his wife Isis to do so on his behalf.

The response comes in the prophecy, "Dicito praeconi lucis si pontem ad urbem servandum dissolvet, praemium suum exilium erit". A full translation is not provided.

It seems to imply that if Peter doesn't resolve the issue with Mr Punch, who he has nailed to the original London Bridge, then he will end up in exile.

Answer: Wandle

As Peter and the Faceless Man fall off of the building in the current era, they also appear in the historic London, or the memory of London 2,000 years ago, somewhere that Peter has visited several times.

In this visit he meets the previous river gods of the Fleet, Tyburn and Beverley Brook, who assist him to get through the assorted forces of the Faceless Man. Here we also encounter the missing Viking ghosts from Holland Park and the ghostly horses from the River Brent.

Then Mr Punch makes an appearance, intending to break an agreement he made with Peter in the current time setting. Next, Punch's daughter wades in, the genius loci of the River Walcott (who is the same goddess still in residence in the modern era), forcing him to keep the agreement. She does this principally because Peter prevented the Faceless Man from killing her.

The action then switches back to the current time, where Peter and the Faceless Man have their downward plummet interrupted when they hit the top of a transit van.

The origins of the goddess of the River Wandle, the Goddess of Schmutter, are revealed in one of the short stories found in "Tales from the Folly". She doesn't appear in "Lies Sleeping".

Answer: Skyping

At the end of the struggle with the Faceless Man, Peter has him in handcuffs. The Faceless Man is then shot. This was not of Peter's doing or instigation, still processes must be followed and it means Peter must move out of The Folly for the time being.

Moving in with Beverley, Peter expects to get a respite from his lessons. Sadly, his hopes are shattered and the studies of Greek and Latin continue. This is because the Nightingale has learnt to use Skype, probably taught by Abigail.

Answer: Queen of the Nile

Oxley, right hand river deity of Old Father Thames, is the proud owner of the Queen of the Nile. The Pride of Putney, where Peter and Beverley spend their night, is also the boat that Beverley had as a home during her sabbatical, which is another way of describing the "hostage exchange" which was agreed after the events of the first book in the series.

"Against the Dark" is the (mostly destroyed) film script found in the house of Richard Williams, one of the Little Crocodiles. This turns out to have a connection with the Faceless Man.

The Society of the Wise is the formal name for the association of magical practitioners that originated the Folly. At the start of the series, their numbers were a grand total of one, Thomas Nightingale.