This one's a bit shorter than the rest ... I suppose the length of the paragraphs make up for that, ahahah. Sorry for walls of text - they are giants amongst their kin, reducing those puny fences to nothing but ants under their feet! ... I probably ought to get more sleep. :P
By the way, does anyone know if the TV Series thingy for this is any good? I hear it has Matt Smith (?) in it. /is immediatly intrigued.
Sally Lockhart is living quietly in London with her obnoxious cousin, after her father's tragic death at sea. But the peaceful, if hateful, existence is about to end. Sally's father left her a message, and deciphering it will lead her into a world of danger and excitement such as she's never known... (From Amazon.co.uk)
I hear that some thing’s are powered by diamonds. This book doesn’t explicitly feature diamonds, but it does feature other sparkly objects – for example, the plot ruby is quite prominent. However, since the plot ruby spends most of its time eluding capture, this book needs some other driving force to propel it towards the end. And those would be the characters! The characters in this were absolutely fantastic; the majority managed to be engaging and entertaining. Sally, despite being in possession of a personality that could be dropped off into one a soup pot without much afterwards notice, spent her time filling her head full of realistic ways to react, and her back full of spine. Mrs Holland was a villain that proved to be genuinely scary in her best moments and slightly offensive in her worst. Yet, she was driven and the logical reason behind her motives made her a convincing villain. Perhaps her role might have changed had she acquired a toothbrush and some glitter. Jim was by far my favourite character; he was ever so amusing and adorable and given the opportunity I would likely burst when talking about him, but I have other things that require my expertise at the moment, unfortunately. But something that impressed me was that he and Adelaide (who might have been important, but I can’t say that I cared much for her) actually acted like children. They didn’t drop overly clever lines about the social state, nor did they partake in heavy monologues about the state of our eternal souls or whatever. It was quite refreshing. A bit like Sushi after five years of eating nothing but Chinese food.
One such thing is the plot – a problem that those who primarily read action novels may find that the pace of which the action starts kicking the sky mimics that of a dying elephant, from an infected gunshot wound in its ear. It’s plodding, and when everything is revealed (conveniently, right at the end – the book works on the same basis as the secret service of rather lazy people; nothing is revealed until it is completely necessary), it naturally feels a little bit rushed, but it really is quite impressive when it finally throws down its deck. The action, when it finally realises that its purpose is not to sit and make profound comments about the weather, but to be exciting and engaging, does its job very well. That’s not to say that the rest of the book isn’t engaging – it reads a little bit like an old Sherlock Holmes novel. The atmosphere is spot on – when there are no chase scenes to be had, fear not, as there is plenty of opium and plenty of deductions and mystery to go around. The narrative flowed like the conversation between a group of friends who secretly harbour intense hatred for each other – very polite but just witty enough to keep blandness at bay.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that I have no large bones to pick with this book – the largest of which resides in your ear, and it regards the pacing. But otherwise, it was an enjoyable novel in vein of the sensational novels of the period in which it was set. The mystery was interesting, the plot despite having all the pace of a menopausal alpaca, did deliver some wonderful twists when it stopped pondering the state of its pension, and Jim just seems so huggable and cute! Ahem. Phillip Pullman is one of my favourite authors, so I was pretty much obliged to like this. (If I didn’t, then my heart would likely go to war with my brain and leave me a vegetable to be eaten by my organs or whatever.) I’m quite glad I did. I would recommend it for people who want some mindless, traditional mystery to get lost in for a while.
★★★★.5
Sally Lockhart is living quietly in London with her obnoxious cousin, after her father's tragic death at sea. But the peaceful, if hateful, existence is about to end. Sally's father left her a message, and deciphering it will lead her into a world of danger and excitement such as she's never known... (From Amazon.co.uk)
I hear that some thing’s are powered by diamonds. This book doesn’t explicitly feature diamonds, but it does feature other sparkly objects – for example, the plot ruby is quite prominent. However, since the plot ruby spends most of its time eluding capture, this book needs some other driving force to propel it towards the end. And those would be the characters! The characters in this were absolutely fantastic; the majority managed to be engaging and entertaining. Sally, despite being in possession of a personality that could be dropped off into one a soup pot without much afterwards notice, spent her time filling her head full of realistic ways to react, and her back full of spine. Mrs Holland was a villain that proved to be genuinely scary in her best moments and slightly offensive in her worst. Yet, she was driven and the logical reason behind her motives made her a convincing villain. Perhaps her role might have changed had she acquired a toothbrush and some glitter. Jim was by far my favourite character; he was ever so amusing and adorable and given the opportunity I would likely burst when talking about him, but I have other things that require my expertise at the moment, unfortunately. But something that impressed me was that he and Adelaide (who might have been important, but I can’t say that I cared much for her) actually acted like children. They didn’t drop overly clever lines about the social state, nor did they partake in heavy monologues about the state of our eternal souls or whatever. It was quite refreshing. A bit like Sushi after five years of eating nothing but Chinese food.
One such thing is the plot – a problem that those who primarily read action novels may find that the pace of which the action starts kicking the sky mimics that of a dying elephant, from an infected gunshot wound in its ear. It’s plodding, and when everything is revealed (conveniently, right at the end – the book works on the same basis as the secret service of rather lazy people; nothing is revealed until it is completely necessary), it naturally feels a little bit rushed, but it really is quite impressive when it finally throws down its deck. The action, when it finally realises that its purpose is not to sit and make profound comments about the weather, but to be exciting and engaging, does its job very well. That’s not to say that the rest of the book isn’t engaging – it reads a little bit like an old Sherlock Holmes novel. The atmosphere is spot on – when there are no chase scenes to be had, fear not, as there is plenty of opium and plenty of deductions and mystery to go around. The narrative flowed like the conversation between a group of friends who secretly harbour intense hatred for each other – very polite but just witty enough to keep blandness at bay.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that I have no large bones to pick with this book – the largest of which resides in your ear, and it regards the pacing. But otherwise, it was an enjoyable novel in vein of the sensational novels of the period in which it was set. The mystery was interesting, the plot despite having all the pace of a menopausal alpaca, did deliver some wonderful twists when it stopped pondering the state of its pension, and Jim just seems so huggable and cute! Ahem. Phillip Pullman is one of my favourite authors, so I was pretty much obliged to like this. (If I didn’t, then my heart would likely go to war with my brain and leave me a vegetable to be eaten by my organs or whatever.) I’m quite glad I did. I would recommend it for people who want some mindless, traditional mystery to get lost in for a while.
★★★★.5
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