astrangerhere's Reviews (1.31k)

Read in a single afternoon due to it being disablingly hot outside. I thought to read all of Agatha Christie last year but ran into a wall not being able to find this book at my library. Now I have every scrap Lady Agatha has ever written on my Nook and am ready to dive in again :)

Another collaborative work between Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. I did not enjoy this quite as much as A Haunted House, but still I enjoy the bouncing about between authors. I'll now start attacking Dickens in earnest.

It was with great delight that I returned to the world of Flavia DeLuce and banished any fears I might have had of a sophomore slump from Bradley. This book was more tightly plotted and focused and again left me eager for Flavia's next adventure.

I found myself much less engaged by the sketches as I do a normal Dicken's plot. The lack of a named character to really grasp hold of and follow through a narrative was lacking for me.

I'm not sure what I expected out of this book. But I will say it started off well, but then petered out pretty quickly. When the story was about the two boys and the life of summer, I found the writing eloquent and often painfully beautiful. But when it descended into the macabre carnival, the language and they story became convuluted and incoherent. While I enjoyed parts, I can't say I really appreciated the story as a whole.

Shockingly good sci-fi based on a game. My wife is a nut for the game, and I promised I'd read it for her since she liked it so much.