The 600 pages went by quiet quickly actually but the interesting part left once I finished reading the book jacket.
This was one of the strangest books I think I have ever read. It started off as a great read but then it just lost me.
Here are the things that I did not like about the book:
- The Point-of-View was the worst. One paragraph was it was in third person and then all of the sudden you get a sentence like, "I will come back to that later," or "Lets move on to something different." It was the strangest thing ever!
- Connection to each characters. There were three parts to this story and none of them really made sense to me. We start with Andrew who wants to kill himself because Jack the Ripper killed the love of his life, Mary Kelly, who was a "Lady of the Evening". Then part two is about Claire and she falls in love with Tom. Then part three is about a Scotland Yard detective named Colin Garrett who is trying to figure out who killed HG Well, Bram Stroker, and Henry James.
- The time traveling part is when Claire travels to the year 2000. This is where Tom and her have their passionate love affair. Andrew is convinced he should travel back into time to try and save Mary Kelly.
I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps its the translation that is the real issue (but I am not really thinking that it the problem).
--Mary--
You completely cracked me up!! You are so straight-up honest here, and you voice so many of my feelings about this rambling yarn. I too thought it would be FABULOUS based on the cover, the blurb, and the hype: shows how much we know! I've been hanging back on my review because I understand that publishers prefer it closer to the release date and I figured "Why not?"
ReplyDeleteI will say that I thought the second and third parts were at least pass-the-time worthy, although the first part seemed boring, boring, odd (absolutely with you on the strange jumps in narrative voice - trying to mimick Victorian writers, but FAILing), and plus so many unlikeable, thinly developed characters.
Steampunkers might find this one fun, but for "just regular readers": you'll need a boatload (or a time machine's worth) of patience for this one...