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frasersimons 's review for:
Time's Convert
by Deborah Harkness
For the first half of this I was really invested and interested. Harkness is great at showing the dynamics playing out in a particular scene with a lot of nuance, and she clearly has a lot of passion of historical narratives.
This go around Phoebe is being turned into a vampire, and her narrative follows her transition and it’s trials and tribulations. It’s pretty interesting, when at its best!
We also gets the backstory of her partner, Marcus, and his own struggle when turned.
Form time to time it pops into Matthew and Diana’s life, mostly focusing on the issues with their children, each of whom is displaying supernatural affinities already, at such an early age.
I think this mostly worked for me. But as I said, around halfway in and change it started dragging quite a bit. It sometimes feels like a short story, or a couple short stories, that have been puffed up and put together. But I really enjoyed the early years of Marcus and the more granular worldbuilding of vampirism with Phoebe.
What never quite hit home for me was the kids’ storyline, which feels like a massive power fantasy, even more so than the third book, and that book did not land the earning of powers angle at all for me. The stakes didn’t feel real, there was magic Deus ex machina happening. And now their kids are also incredible and amazing and powerful and life is hard, apparently. There’s no real stakes at play here either, yet again. We know what becomes of Marcus. The kids don’t feel like they’re actually in danger. Phoebe changing and maybe not being into Marcus anymore, initially twinged an emotion, but it became clear very quickly that this issue wasn’t at stake either.
It didn’t really feel like there was a plot happening, basically. And I usually don’t require one. I get buy plenty of books ascribed such a label. But this does feel like spinning wheels because, by contrast with the first two books especially, the components that made those so enticing, are the intrigue and mystery and danger. It feels strange. In the end, it delivers on its premise, Harkness, I’ve found, is a joy to read, and it does add world building though. So I think it’s a fair 3 stars, if barely.
p.s, the whole small box sequence where it was banned and controversial to get it hits home so much with what’s happening now with COVID.
This go around Phoebe is being turned into a vampire, and her narrative follows her transition and it’s trials and tribulations. It’s pretty interesting, when at its best!
We also gets the backstory of her partner, Marcus, and his own struggle when turned.
Form time to time it pops into Matthew and Diana’s life, mostly focusing on the issues with their children, each of whom is displaying supernatural affinities already, at such an early age.
I think this mostly worked for me. But as I said, around halfway in and change it started dragging quite a bit. It sometimes feels like a short story, or a couple short stories, that have been puffed up and put together. But I really enjoyed the early years of Marcus and the more granular worldbuilding of vampirism with Phoebe.
What never quite hit home for me was the kids’ storyline, which feels like a massive power fantasy, even more so than the third book, and that book did not land the earning of powers angle at all for me. The stakes didn’t feel real, there was magic Deus ex machina happening. And now their kids are also incredible and amazing and powerful and life is hard, apparently. There’s no real stakes at play here either, yet again. We know what becomes of Marcus. The kids don’t feel like they’re actually in danger. Phoebe changing and maybe not being into Marcus anymore, initially twinged an emotion, but it became clear very quickly that this issue wasn’t at stake either.
It didn’t really feel like there was a plot happening, basically. And I usually don’t require one. I get buy plenty of books ascribed such a label. But this does feel like spinning wheels because, by contrast with the first two books especially, the components that made those so enticing, are the intrigue and mystery and danger. It feels strange. In the end, it delivers on its premise, Harkness, I’ve found, is a joy to read, and it does add world building though. So I think it’s a fair 3 stars, if barely.
p.s, the whole small box sequence where it was banned and controversial to get it hits home so much with what’s happening now with COVID.