There were things I did and didn’t like about Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. I liked how it was genre defying – Was it it AU historical fiction? Was it urban fantasy? I liked the steampunk-ish elements a lot, and overall I ended up liking where the story went in the second half of the book.
The first half of the book felt rather disorganized though. The plot was weak and the characters’ motivations were unclear. The plot as written follows Nathaniel (Thaniel) Steepleton, who works in the Home Office (in 1890s London), and who finds a watch that leads him away from an explosion that would have killed him. He teams up with Mori, a watchmaker from Japan (his backstory was the most interesting, I felt), and a woman named Grace, and they sort of solve a mystery. As I said, the plot left a lot to be desired in some ways.
Thaniel also engages in a marriage of convenience with Grace, but ends up romantically involved with Mori, which Grace does not mind – Thaniel allows Grace to continue the scientific work she wouldn’t be allowed to continue otherwise. Women weren’t encouraged to pursue careers in Victorian London, even if it was AU Victorian London.
Overall, this book was enjoyable enough, but it could have been better. The first half of the book was a bit disorganized in terms of plot. The dialogue could be a bit off-putting. There were at least a couple of unanswered questions/dropped thread. I did like the story of the relationships between Thaniel, Mori, and Grace. Mori’s backstory was fascinating and took place in Japan, and Mori’s story also deals with time travel, which adds interest. And the cover art was beautiful.
There’s a second one book in this series (I think there are only two). I’m not in any rush to read it, but if it falls into my lap, I probably will.
Category Archives: fiction
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke had been on my TBR list for a very long time, and it was one of the last books I listened to while I was still commuting, pre-pandemic, to work every day.
This book was long and sort of dense, but I enjoyed it all the same. The story takes place in sort of an alternate victorian England where magic has left but has made a return in the form of our title characters. Strange and Norrell have to navigate their complex relationship as the only two magicians left in England. They have different ideas of what magic should be and do.
I’m not going to lie, if you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-packed fantasy adventure, you’re going to be disappointed. What this is is a study of complex character and a sort of mystery. The magic had strange rules, the fae were part of the book but not the biggest part.
I listened to this book but didn’t read it – supposedly there are footnotes and illustrations and so if you’re someone who gets a lot of the reading experience this might be a book to read instead of to listen to. I listened to it because it’s much easier for me to listen to books than to read all of them, but this is one I’d like to go back to if given the opportunity to read it.
As I said, I recommend this if you like alternate history, complex characters, and speculative fantasy. I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re looking for the George RR Martin style fantasy, or Tolkien style fantasy, or even Harry Potter style fantasy. The tone is masterful and the prose is great, but it’s not a typical fantasy novel in terms of action or magic. It’s part of what makes it special.
The Art Forger
My last book of 2019 was The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro.
I won’t say it was bad, exactly, but there were parts of it I didn’t care for at all.
The plot is set against the backdrop of the still unsolved theft of thirteen priceless paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, the most valuable of which were taken from ‘The Dutch Room.’ The most valuable piece of art itself was a painting called ‘The Concert‘ by Johannes Vermeer (a work you are probably more familiar with is ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring‘). There are only 34 paintings that are attributed to him in the world. In spite of a ten million dollar reward, the stolen artwork has never been recovered. Considering the value of the artwork is now considered upwards of $600 million, maybe no takers for the rather generous reward isn’t surprising. You can read more about the art theft here and here.
Claire Rothe makes her living forging famous artworks for an online retailer. She enters into a Faustian bargain with a gallery owner who will show her own original artwork if she’ll forge one of the Degas works stolen in the heist. Claire doesn’t ask questions about how the supposedly original Degas work from the theft was acquired but she begins to suspect it’s also a forgery. Claire is made out to be particularly hard up; even though she is a talented artist with an excellent talent and skillset, she is persona non-grata in the art world.
And this is the part of the story that I really, really didn’t like. Claire is persona non-grata in the art because while she was sleeping with one of her professors who is the great artist Isaac somebody or other (who I think is also cheating on his wife), he’s having some kind of artistic block and she paints a painting for him that he takes credit for. It becomes absurdly famous and when she says, “Hey, I painted that, give me credit,” he turns on her. There’s an investigation where she reproduces the work and he can’t, but the investigation concludes that she forged the work basically so everyone can save face. Isaac eventually kills himself without clearing her name (still, yay though) and Claire is blamed for this and is further unwelcome in any meaningful art circles.
There was also the inevitable romance with the gallery owner that left me sighing in ‘Can we please get past this part?’ as well. He’s young and rich and handsome and charming and in over his head and Claire saves him. It was so predictable.
Anyway. What I really liked about The Art Forger was the art stuff. The art history, the oddly specific information about paint, the mystery of the Gardner Museum theft and the mystery of Gardner herself. The mystery about the shady dealings of the gallery owner was also actually pretty good in terms of plot. The only stuff I really disliked was Claire’s ‘Backstory of Sad and Dumb’ which was a lot of the book. I dunno. Maybe I am unusual or dysfunctional or programmed incorrectly or whatever, but I never fell for manipulative guys like Isaac. I never believed them when they said only I could help them. I love my husband very much but I don’t for one second think that I am the only one who can save him from his own artistically void state of blah blah blah BS. Most romance bores me at the best of times and this tragic romance of young woman manipulated by her professor into painting a masterpiece she never gets credit for and he kills himself over thereby doubling her burden had me rolling my eyes so hard I pulled a muscle.
I guess this book is for somebody. It wasn’t for me. The art stuff was awesome. The rest? Meh.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Aside from A Christmas Carol (which I try to read every year at Christmas) and A Tale of Two Cities (which I’ve read twice), this is the only other “full” Dickens book I ever read (excluding other short stories).
For those who don’t know, The Mystery of Edwin Drood holds a unique place in literature. I believe it’s the only whodunnit that doesn’t have a ‘whodunnit’ reveal, because Dickens had a stroke in the middle of writing it. Literally in the middle – twelve parts were planned, six had been published. He left no notes on the last six installments and just died in the middle, and the general public has been trying to solve the mystery of Drood’s disappearance for 152 years. It was pretty selfish of him to die in the middle of the story but that’s how it goes sometimes 😉
Anyway, the novel follows the teenage orphan Edwin Drood (imagine!) as he goes about his business, which is to say, he hangs out with his betrothed, he visits his uncle, he makes plans for his future (going to Egypt to work as an engineer where his father had been a partner). Unfortunately for Edwin, he and his fiancé like each other but fight a lot, his uncle is an opium addict who (in addition to hanging out in opium dens, also likes to hang out in crypts) may wish to cause him harm, and his future is left in question when he disappears under mysterious circumstances.
There are other supporting characters and other mysteries as well – why was Princess Puffer following and cursing John Jasper (Drood’s uncle)? How do the Landlesses fit in? Who is Dick Datchery?
As I said, Dickens’ death leaves the work unfinished, with subsequent generations of readers trying to crack the mystery of Edwin Drood. Was Drood murdered by his uncle? Or was he going to triumphantly return, wealthy and successful from Egypt?
While there are no known notes or clues to how Dickens was going officially end the story, certain clues do point in the direction of John Jasper murdering his nephew. First, there are the out of story clues:
1. Dickens wrote a letter to his friend/biographer John Forster outlining the plot (although not the murder) and describing the story as the murder of a nephew by his uncle.
2. The story’s original illustrator was told to include a certain scarf in one of his illustrations because Jasper was to strangle Drood with it.
3. Dickens’ son was told unequivocally by his father that Jasper was the murderer.
Even before reading up on the unfinished story, the text also provides a lot of clues, which I won’t spoil here, because the mystery is still fun, even after a century and a half.
As always, Dickens character names are some of the most memorable you’ll ever come across.
I actually loved this story, even though it was unfinished, and no Dickens fan should skip it.
Christopher Buehlman
After reading Those Across The River in 2018, I decided to finish up Christopher Buehlman’s published novels in 2019. Or at least the ones available to listen to in my library. I listened to these while fixing up my home before moving in, so they were great for passing time.
Those books were (in the order that I read them):
The Lesser Dead
The Suicide Motor Club
The Necromancer’s House
But let’s do this backwards, because I didn’t finish The Necromancer’s House and was less impressed with The Suicide Motor Club. The Necromancer’s House was a snoozefest. The premise was super promising – a guy can speak to the dead through film and ends up being chased by a monster out of Russain folklore – but I just couldn’t get through it. Maybe I’ll try again, maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but it just didn’t grab me.
The Suicide Motor Club was a revenge story. It takes place in the 1960s and involves a group of nomadic vampires driving around highways in muscle cars, taking victims from car wrecks (that they cause). They accidentally leave a live witness after wiping out her entire family, and she joins a convent in the hopes of finding peace. Years later, she’s approached by a group of vampire hunters, with a goal of wiping out all the vampires, especially the ones in the fast cars. She’s the only one who can recognize them. This one was pretty good but it dragged a bit in the middle, and it wasn’t as good as the The Lesser Dead, which it was tied to through a character named Clayton.
The Lesser Dead was definitely the best of these three books and the scariest fiction book I read in 2019. If you want to feel discomfited through an entire book and especially at the end of a book, this is the story for you. The book follows Joey, a vampire living in the New York underground in 1978. Joey was turned by Margaret in the 1930s, as revenge for getting her fired from her job as a cook.
Anyway, in spite of this antagonistic relationship, Joey is now part of Margaret’s nest of vampires, along with some others. Vampires are corpses that are all in varying states of decay, and have to use their glamor magic to project the image of health to humans and other vampires, and this is how Joey in particular sustains himself: he goes to night clubs and parties, picks up women, and drains them.
The nest of vampires encounters a bunch of child vampires, who are constantly hungry, and not very discreet, which goes against the group rules. The children are so constantly hungry that Joey thinks they might be another species of vampire entirely, but this is eventually found not to be the case. Still, the vampires find themselves feeling sorry for the children, who they think were turned for pedophilic purposes, and feed them their own blood.
Obviously things are not quite what they seem, and the reader learns this as Joey does too.
I will say it’s a little slow to start, but it’s clearly building to something, and overall I loved The Lesser Dead. It was thoroughly creepy and unsettling. I will probably revisit it and it’s the strongest reason for revisiting The Necromancer’s House. I really can’t emphasize how good this book was. I listened to the audiobook, which Buehlman actually narrates and it’s outstanding. It was a fantastic experience and I can’t recommend it enough.
The Dark Half
The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, I think maybe writing as Richard Bachmann at the time. Bachmann was a penname of King’s during the 1970s and 1980s. It’s one of two books by him I read in 2019 (the other being Pet Sematary).
The story opens with Thad, an author and recovering alcoholic, living somewhere in Maine. Ludlow, I want to say. Thad’s books aren’t very successful, they’re a dense literary fiction, fairly cerebral, and he finds success under the penname George Stark, writing crime novels about a psychotic killer.
When it becomes known that George Stark is actually Thad, Thad and his wife stage a phony funeral at the local cemetery that attracts a bunch of attention, including from People magazine. I can’t remember exactly why they decided to get rid of Stark. I think it was because Thad became kind of a shitty person while writing as George (drinking heavily and chain smoking and being a general nasty piece of work) and with people discovering Thad was George, he didn’t need George so much anymore.
Well, as things usually go in horror stories, George did not stay dead. He emerges from the graveyard with a physical body and equipped with the “personality” Thad gave him while he was writing as George. George goes on a killing spree (like the psychopath Thad wrote about in his crime books), killing everyone associated with his death, including the author of the People magazine article, Thad’s editor, etc… George is not a very nice guy. The murders are investigated by Alan Pangborn, the sheriff of Castle Rock (and one of King’s recurring characters). Thad has alibis, and doesn’t much want to answer questions, but his fingerprints and recordings of his voice are found at the scene, and Pangborn believes Thad is guilty of the murders, he just isn’t sure how.
Anyway, after Thad realizes he and Stark have a mental bond and realizes his twin children also have mental bond, he and Pangborn figure out that Thad had a twin reabsorbed in utero, and that this parasitic twin was removed from Thad’s brain as a child. (Gross, y’all). So the question becomes if Stark is a malevolent spirit separate of Thad, or Thad manifesting an alternate personality? And who would win?
I love pseudo-psychology/scientific stories like this. They’re fun and ridiculous, and this was no exception. In addition to being a horror book, it was also something of a whodunit, which are one of my favorite types of stories, and it kept me very interested as I pulled up carpeting and painted my new home (before moving in). As with many of King’s books, I was left feeling rather creeped out and thankful I didn’t have a twin (at least none that I know of). *shudders*
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight was one of the few books I physically read in 2019. I believe it came out in 2018 and was on the long list for The Booker Prize, for those of you who care about these things.
This was one of those books that was heartbreakingly beautiful and also so bittersweet and sad that I was devastated when it was over.
It follows 14 year old Nathaniel towards the end of the second world war in London. Nathaniel’s parents leave Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachel, in the care of their lodger while they go off for “work” in Singapore. The lodger, The Moth (actually named Walter), associates with an eccentric crowd that shapes the children’s lives during the postwar period.
Another acquaintance, ‘The Darter’ helps Nathaniel gain employment, where he meets and sleeps with Agnes (not her real name). After the year is up and their parents still haven’t returned, Nathaniel and Rachel begin to suspect that their mother is still in England, and Nathaniel begins to suspect he is being followed.
Nathaniel, Rachel, and Walter are eventually attacked by the men following Nathaniel, and when he and Rachel awaken, they’ve already been rescued, but Walter was killed. They briefly see their mother, who implies that giving up her children was part of “the deal” she made to keep them safe. Nathaniel and Rachel are then separated and rehomed.
In 1959, Nathaniel, now and adult, is working in the Foreign Office. He is part of a censorship effort regarding espionage activities towards the end of the war. Nathaniel is looking for the people from that part of his life, including his mother, which is part of his motivation for working in the Foreign Office. He spends the rest of the book looking for her and the people who so shaped his life as an adolescent.
This is one of those books that hints the past never really stays in the past, and that memory is a construct of the older, wiser self. The second part I admit I didn’t totally come up with on my own, I’m summarizing the reviews I read after the book. The first part I did, though! It’s also obviously a book about the lingering effects of war.
The book itself was beautifully written – the language is engaging and intricate, with many plot points more implied than revealed.
I really enjoyed this book even though it broke my heart. If you don’t like that kind of thing, don’t read it, but if you do…this is a good one.
The Grip of It
Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It was a psychological thriller/horror book that was favorably compared to the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and that’s mostly why I picked it. It wasn’t a bad book, exactly, it just…wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, I guess.
Julie and James are a young married couple who move into a house “between the forest and the ocean” because they need to get away from the city where they lived. James is basically a gambling addict and unable to control himself, so they leave to “start over” in the country with no money. As someone raised on the east coast of the United States for my whole life, I LOL’d at this. Where did you get a house by the ocean you can afford with no money, exactly? Please let me know, I’d like to move there.
Anyway, after they move in, the weirdness cranks up. The cute (if old and in need of some cosmetic work) house they bought seems to start rotting from the inside out, with strange stains appearing on the walls and the water inexplicably contaminated with filth. I will say that Jemc does a good job of building atmosphere here. The language is good and the house is claustrophobic and undeniably creepy. There are rooms within rooms (hello, House of Leaves) and the feeling that the house is haunted pervades throughout the novel, with hauntings happening to everyone but very much centered on the main characters. In desperately searching for the source of the house’s unexplained decay and their increasing psychological and physical torment, we end up following the couple as they get to know their weird neighbors and search for information on the house’s mysterious previous owners.
There are two places Jemc falls short here, though, and they’re fairly major flaws: the couple themselves, Julie and James, are flat, boring, and what personality they do have is rather unlikeable. This is a pretty major flaw if you’re trying to get a reader to sympathize with them. The second place this novel fails is with the resolution, in that there is none. There’s an element in many psychological horror books that leaves a lot up to the reader, but this book has literally no resolution to anything. The couple just picks up and moves out of the house. I don’t know how they managed this with no money either, but when one of the narrator’s mysterious bruising matches the weird wall stains and you never get a clue as to why, common place mysteries like “how are you buying and selling homes with no money?” take a backseat.
I’d give this book 2.5 of 5 stars, if I was using a star rating. The atmosphere and language I enjoyed, but the characters and plot fell really flat.
The Fisherman
I picked up John Langan’s The Fisherman when I was living in Nyack, New York because it was in the “local interest” section of the Barnes & Noble in the Palisades Mall.
There aren’t a ton of horror novels that take place in upstate New York, but I found one.
It was pretty good.
The novel takes place over a course of three parts and is presented as a memoir of our narrator, Abe. In Part 1, ‘Men Without Women,’ Abe marries Marie who dies, about a year and a half after their marriage, of breast cancer. Abe is naturally devastated, but eventually pulls himself out of his depression and burgeoning alcoholism when he wakes up one day with a strong desire to go fishing. Fishing is how he eventually processes Marie’s death and is able to go back to work in a functioning manner.
As the years pass, one of Abe’s co-workers, Dan, also loses his wife and children. His wife and twin toddlers are killed instantly when they’re hit by an 18 wheeler that runs a stop sign. Abe strikes up a friendship of sorts with Dan, and they go fishing most weekends, sharing a bond of grief they don’t really speak about.
Eventually, Dan suggests they try a new fishing spot – Dutchman’s Creek in the Catskill mountains. On the way up, they get caught in a torrential rain and stop at a diner, where a short-order cook (a thinly disguised version of HP Lovecraft) hears their destination and advises them against going. Part 2 of the book – ‘Der Fischer’ – tells the history of Dutchman’s Creek. This is where the story gets really bizarre, in the way most horror stories are bizarre. Using the technique of a story within a story, we go from the present day to the early 20th century, where we are presented with a tale that includes zombies, an immortal sorcerer, water nymphs, a cursed grimoire, disgraced academics, a heroic fellowship of men, and last but certainly not least, an ancient primordial monster lurking below the waves of a vast, black ocean (leviathan).
Part 2 of the story takes up the most space but to me it was the most interesting part.
So, Abe and Dan decide to continue on to Dutchman’s Creek, in spite of the warnings of the short-order cook. This is a horror story, afterall. Part 3, ‘On the Shores of the Black Ocean,’ is where these two narratives converge and goes on to address the consequences afterwards. I won’t ruin it for you, as this is a pretty decent payoff and the book isn’t that old.
This is the sort of book that is about one thing but is really about something else. This book is a book about grief, and how people deal with it and go on to use it to continue their lives after a devastating loss. Abe uses his grief as a force to transform his life. Dan stews in his with a horrific result. It reminded me, in this sense, of the movie ‘The Babadook.’
I enjoyed this book, but I can see why not everyone would. It’s a character study as much as a horror novel, and it does have a rather slow build up and is very psychological in many ways. That said, I really enjoyed it, especially as I knew the local geography. I recommend it highly, if you like this kind of story. It was interesting, well done, and very suspenseful.
The Thursday Next Novel Series
Thursday Next is the protagonist of a book series I accidentally stumbled on 2019. I believe I bought One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde at an airport when I forgot my own book, not realizing it was part of a series. I enjoyed it in spite of being somewhat confused by it (I definitely remember reading it and in the middle having a moment of clarity where the entire story made sense).
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series currently stand as such:
Series 1:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
Series 2 (so far):
First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays is Missing
The Woman Who Died A Lot
In 2019, I read/listened to four Thursday Next novels. The second novel of the second series, and the first three novels of the first series. The only reason I didn’t continue is that I couldn’t find the later books as audiobooks, although as I was writing this I went back to check and was able to borrow Something Rotten as an audiobook right away (and did so, will be listening to it after my current book).
I am sort of at a loss as where to begin “reviewing” the Thursday Next series, as the universe created around them is one of the most creative and complex I’ve read outside of high fantasy. The Thursday Next wikipedia page describes the stories as “comic fantasy, alternate history mystery novels” and that’s about as good a genre breakdown as you’re going to get.
Thursday herself is an engaging character, in her mid thirties and quite bright, working in the Literary Detective section. Literature is much more popular in Thursday’s world than ours, and much of the plot is centered around classic literature.
Fforde’s writing is full of wordplay – alliteration and puns abound – and he plays with traditional genres. There’s metafiction, fantasy, and parody. There are many, many literary references that made me grin. I quite enjoyed the novels and highly recommend them to all nerds who like literature and wordplay. I am pleasantly surprised to have Something Rotten on my audiobook shelf and look forward to trying to find the other books in the series.
Absolutely recommend.
words in scarlet ink 