This one had particular appeal for the topic it explored. Amid a special commission to examine new herbal medications brought recently aboard a ship from the Caribbean, Dr Thomas Silkstone faces a strange feeling of unease when a professor of anatomy has far too much ease accessing recently deceased cadavers. It’s fishy. That, and a special herb that supposedly has the power to resurrect the dead, a medical journal, and its important keeper have all mysteriously gone missing. Not to mention the suspicious deaths of the doctors responsible for the transport of the herbs. Well, you get the picture: Thomas gets a lot dumped on his plate. And he’s super curious. He needs to know.

No punches held in this one addressing the developing laws and established practices involving the way humans treated one another based on the colour of skin. The exploration of this social issue was the best part of the novel, and the additional characters involved were almost more interesting than Thomas and Lydia (well, we liked them better than Lydia, that’s for sure. She doesn’t improve much here, and in fact, I tried to like her more, but I think she probably gets a bit worse; her saving grace is that she’s not present much). 

The part about the secret formula to raise the dead was a bit weird. Indeed, that whole plot-line was anticlimactic in resolution, but necessary for the whole web woven here. It just ended on a bit of an eye-roll. Not sure what could have been done with it otherwise as it was so super fantastical, but more creativity required for this solution. 

Anyway, it all goes to hell at the very end, like putridly and morosely, just as we’re starting to maybe care a touch more for Lydia, but I can see the potential for the exploration of this particular confrontation of an old system…

I’m glad I’m reading these long after the whole series has been published because I’d be a tad annoyed at that ending — on to the next cos no. Can’t end there.