Page count: 402 pages
Audio book length: 13hrs 38mins
Rating: 3 stars
Mary Jekyll finds herself orphaned and nearly destitute. Most of the servants have to be let go, and she's sold off most of what's valuable around the house. She hopes she can get some money by tracking down Edward Hyde, her father's infamous friend, but instead finds a young woman, Diana, who is apparently Hyde's daughter. The girl was raised by nuns, with monthly financial support from Mary's mother. Diana refuses to stay in the convent any longer, and mary has no choice but to bring the girl home with her.
While trying to assist Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in investigating the gruesome murders of several women on the streets of London, Mary and Diana meet and befriend a number of unusual young ladies, all the results of strange experimentation - Beatrice Rappachini, whose touch and breath is poisonous; Catherin Moreau, literally a cat-woman, and Justine Frankenstein (Doctor Frankenstein did in fact create a bride for Adam, she decided not to marry him). The young women are all the results of unscrupulous experimentation by immoral scientists, and now it seems like the recent murders are also connected to the secret society of these scientists. Mary, Diana and their new friends have to help Holmes and Watson bring true monsters to justice.
If this story hadn't been narrated by Kate Reading, I don't actually think I would have stuck with it. There are a lot of cool concepts in this book, but the execution of the story just didn't work out for me. I think it just took too long for the various parts to come together and for the various backstories of the women to be explored. Once they got to the point where they created a found family of sorts and continued the work with Sherlock Holmes, I became more interested. So I might check out the sequel and hope that the story gets better in that.
Page count: 357 pages
Audio book length: 13 hrs
Rating: 4 stars
Listening to Ms Reading narrate a historical fantasy book set in Victorian times, featuring Sherlock Holmes, made me remember that I had two Lady Sherlock books to catch up on, and they would actually be entertaining.
Charlotte Holmes is contracted by Moriarty himself to track down his daughter, who seems to have joined a cult in a remote village in Cornwall. Charlotte's sister Livia is trying to decipher a clue left by Moriarty's son, Mr. Marbleton, and Mrs Watson and Lord Ingram are just trying their best to assist Charlotte in whichever way she best requires it.
I really like how Charlotte and Ash's relationship develops in this one. Much as I like Livia, I don't really care about her tragic romance with Mr. Marbleton. I also don't understand why these books are so preoccupied with Moriarty, who is a boring character, no matter which version of Sherlock Holmes one encounters (I very much liked what Elementary did with the character, but even there, Moriarty did not dominate the plot as much as here). I don't care about the character and his stupid machinations. He's also barely in any of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. I want Charlotte and her crew to deal with other mysteries and just move away from this tedious storyline. Sadly, based on the developments of this book, I doubt I'm going to get my wish any time soon.
Page count: 353 pages
Audio book length: 13hrs 47mins
Rating: 4.5 stars
Charlotte is on a boat! Disguised as an outrageous old lady (for reasons that are obvious if you've read the previous book in the series, but I don't want to spoil that part). Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram are also there, obviously. Charlotte and Ash are still bonking (yay!) For reasons of extreme plot contrivance, it seems like a large part of the people who have crossed paths with Charlotte in earlier books are also present on this voyage, including Livia and her mother; whatshisface who deflowered Charlotte and whose wife then made a massive scandal out of it; as well as the police detective who investigated the murder case involving Inspector Treadles.
Surprising no one, there's a murder (during a terrible storm) and Charlotte cannot get directly involved. Lord Ingram has to act as stenographer for the police inspector who takes it upon himself to question everyone, to see if they can solve the murder before reaching land (where they have to let the passengers disembark, and the murderer will have a chance to escape). While there were quite a few early plot contrivances, I'm happy with it, because this book was a lot of fun, and the dreaded Moriarty was mostly entirely absent from the plot. I totally called the identity of plot moppet nr 2 relatively early on, but I'm sure lots of other people did too, this was clearly not supposed to be one of the central mysteries of the story. Charlotte had to solve a murder while having to remain in disguise and only gathering clues indirectly was really interesting. More like this, Ms. Thomas. Moriarty sucks. Fun, clever stories like this instead.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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