Book 84: "The Dark Volume" by G.W. Dahlquist
Monday, October 26th, 2009 09:49![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeBut Eloise cried out sharply, even as thin lines of tears broke forth down her cheeks. 'Who are you to know anything, Celeste Temple? You are a wilful thing who has been happily asleep these past cruel days - who has money and confident ease, who has been rescued from your brazen presumption again and again by these very men who may now be dead - or who knows where? Who I have watched over night after night, watched alone, only to have you abandon me at every adventuresome whim that pops into your spoilt-brat's brain!'
This book is a sequel to "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters", and I may as well just repeat what I wrote about that book.
A steampunk adventure in which three disparate people (a hired killer, a jilted woman, and a doctor whose job is to keep a dissolute prince out of trouble) come together to investigate a secret cabal. It was rather long and could easily have been edited to a more manageable length. In my opinion the reader doesn't really need to have the same time period covered in tortuous detail not once but three times (from the point of view of each of the protagonists). And just how many times did the baddies leave someone to kill one of the protagonists and assume they were dead, only to have them escape and pop up just as the baddies are gloating over their death? More times than your average James Bond movie, I reckon! But I still enjoyed it, even though it took me well over a fortnight to slog my way through it.
"The Dark Volume" is a bit shorter and the escapes from certain death are rather less James Bondesque, but otherwise it is just more of the same. And as it finishes with one of the characters swearing revenge, I guess there will be a third book coming along sometime soon.
This book is a sequel to "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters", and I may as well just repeat what I wrote about that book.
A steampunk adventure in which three disparate people (a hired killer, a jilted woman, and a doctor whose job is to keep a dissolute prince out of trouble) come together to investigate a secret cabal. It was rather long and could easily have been edited to a more manageable length. In my opinion the reader doesn't really need to have the same time period covered in tortuous detail not once but three times (from the point of view of each of the protagonists). And just how many times did the baddies leave someone to kill one of the protagonists and assume they were dead, only to have them escape and pop up just as the baddies are gloating over their death? More times than your average James Bond movie, I reckon! But I still enjoyed it, even though it took me well over a fortnight to slog my way through it.
"The Dark Volume" is a bit shorter and the escapes from certain death are rather less James Bondesque, but otherwise it is just more of the same. And as it finishes with one of the characters swearing revenge, I guess there will be a third book coming along sometime soon.
