The first of today's two books under review is The Game by Laurie R. King. This is the second of King's stories about Sherlock Holmes after his retirement. This one picks up some time after the first of her books, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Holmes and Mary Russell are now married and have been sent to India on a mission to find Kimball O'Hara.
This is one of a trio of books I got for Mr Click as a gift and so
after he was finished with it, I picked it up, since it ticked my Reading
Challenge requirement of a book which was written by a female author. It's about
Sherlock Holmes and it sees him tackling a brand new mission, so it should be an
enjoyable read, except both Mr Click and I struggled with it.
For my part, I found it tricky to get into. There seemed to be
long periods where not much was happening and then after what seemed like more
than half the book, they found O'Hara and everything happened. I
couldn't help but think that this book suffers from the same problem that the
last one did; it either could of been a lot shorter, or it could have been
covered in a little more detail and split into more than one book.
There was a lot more focus on Mary than Sherlock as well. I
struggled to see them as a married couple because aside from touching her hair
occasionally, they didn't seem very involved. I realise that Holmes is
definitely not your average man, but if you're going to make him married, at
least have him show some sort of affection or something for the person he's
married to, otherwise why can't Mary Russell just be a companion like
Watson?
I also have a really random complaint about this book, which I
suspect is a result of me not being a teenager anymore and yet still expect to
be able to read into the small hours of the morning, but the print in this
edition is pretty small. When I was reading it in bed, my eyes would get tired
and I'd want to fall asleep.
All that said, I couldn't help but wonder about the next book in
the series; the third one in the set that I got Mr Click. I do have to admit I
like the third one, Locked Rooms, much better than the other two in the
series. But I'll review that one some time around April.
And so onto the second book review for the day, Tales
of Terror and Mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This one is a
collection of short stories by Sherlock Holmes' creator himself. It was a
conveniently free Kindle download which ticked the Reading Challenge
mystery/thriller box.
Compared to The Game, I raced through this one, starting
it one day and finishing it the next. It's available on Project Gutenberg which
means I can read it on the go; that makes it easy to read in my breaks at work
or waiting for stuff in the car, since I can pull it up on my phone. It's
handy.
I liked trying to figure out the twist in the tales. I did guess
the endings for 'The New Catacomb' and 'The Case of Lady Sannox'. They were
pretty similar, but it still made me feel kind of smart, sort of like when you
can figure out one of Holmes's cases before he does.
I read The Lost World & Other Stories a couple of
years ago and they had a more supernatural/sci-fi vibe to them. A couple of the
stories in Tales of Terror and Mystery reminded me of them, in
particular 'The Horror of the Heights' and 'The Terror of Blue John Gap'.
There's also a nice little Easter Egg in a couple of the stories;
Sherlock Holmes crops up twice, kind of. It's a nice little nod to fans of his
other famous stories. It also made sense because the stories featured the sorts
of cases that he almost certainly would've investigated.
I'd definitely recommend this one to fans of Conan Doyle's other
works.
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Let me know what you think. :-)