Holmes

The Last of August, A Case for Jamie, A Question of Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro

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Started: 1/7/23
Finished: 1/20/23

Sequels to A Study in Charlotte, which I read FIVE YEARS AGO (way to be timely with continuing the series). It’s enjoyable, but I think the first book was the best in the series. It gets into teenage angst, but in a stilted way – which makes sense because Sherlock Holmes, but still – and the angst reminds me of the COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY angst in the later books in Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. So that was a little irritating. And the plots of the later books do that thing where it’s impossible to figure out the twists and turns. I want the mystery to be difficult. I don’t want information to be withheld in such a way that I would never be able to figure it out.

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

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Started: 7/10/21
Finished: 7/22/21

Katherine Addison’s first book*, The Goblin Emperor, is one of my new favorites. I loved it. Picking this one up was a no-brainer, and now that I have put it down, I want more. It’s a strange book – it’s Holmes and Watson, but with different names. It’s familiar mysteries, but with unfamiliar resolutions. There are familiar characters, but with supernatural twists. I wasn’t sure if I really liked it, although I enjoyed it, but I love the main friendship and I want to read more of it. So yeah, I really liked it.

*Not really her first book. Katherine Addison is a pen name for Sarah Monette, who has written other stuff. I just learned that. I have not read Sarah Monette. I will.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

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Started: 3/17/19
Finished: 3/21/19

First in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, we have Dr. Jeckyll’s daughter teaming up with Holmes and Watson in 1890s London to find the murderous Mr. Hyde and get the monetary reward because poor Miss Jeckyll is dead broke.  The book is being written by a character we don’t meet (in the narrative, anyway) until much later in the book, but we know she’s writing it right away because the other characters have conversations with her about the narrative, within the narrative.  It’s loads of fun.

Update: NOPE. It started out fun and interesting, but the writing style got really irritating (although not the interruptions from characters – that was still mostly fun).  It’s full of exposition, all tell and no show, and it’s all happening in the dialogue, which makes the dialogue really clunky and painful to read.  It’s a pity.  I really wanted to like this book.

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

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Started: 4/13/18
Finished: 4/15/18

Another Holmes and Watson take, but this time the Holmes character is an unstable Vietnamese woman and Watson is a sentient spaceship.  It’s a novella, just long enough to solve one mystery, but while I liked the characters, I found the mystery (so basically, the story) a little…not hard to understand exactly, because I followed the plot, but hard to explain, maybe?  Like, I read it, but I don’t think I could describe what happened.