Reviews - The Sinister Booksellers of Bath

700 reviews for:

The Sinister Booksellers of Bath

Garth Nix

3.92 AVERAGE

charlmax's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

duck_reads's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

ursus42's review

4.5

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

elsemma's review

3.5

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

kleonard's review against another edition

2.0

I don't like this series much, despite my deep and enduring love for much of Nix's other work. The Bookseller series (well, there are 2 now) has a generally rushed tone, often frantic, with mania just one step away. Occasionally there are glimpses of Nix's better writing capabilities, where he slows down a bit and gives readers small sips of more measured descriptions and dialogue. But for the most part, both books feel as if they've been written as quickly as possible. The characters and the developing lore reflect this: Susan remains flat and dull, and her mother remains a cardboard figure entirely, and Merlin is a completely self-obsessed jerk. Vivien is a bit better developed, but still not very well fleshed-out; other characters seem to be there simply to fill in spaces. There's a lot of representation of minority identities, though, but most of them are small roles and their differences are denoted though awkward constructions. There's a lot of description and detail about cars; can we inject the characters and places with the same enthusiasm as the cars get? The plot is okay--the maps are clever and having Susan make one is great--but the antagonists are not exactly original. In fact, one is similar to the Stilken Lirael fights in *Lirael,* with the hooked arms and shape-changing abilities. There are fantastic ideas in the Booksellers books, but Nix isn't taking the time to let them breathe, and the hurrying pace throughout is detrimental.

silverwolf77's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous funny relaxing medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

themanfromdelmonte's review against another edition

3.0

I found this quite difficult to get into. It is a caper, and rather breathless at times, rushing us from one incident to the next.

Spoiler

In short, a wizard has a relative, (I’m not sure whether it’s her mother or her daughter, but then I am recovering from a hangover that would cripple an elephant) who has an incurable disease. The wizard has taken her out of the normal flow of time and has bought her isolation with human sacrifice. Now she needs to bring the woman back and cure the disease and for this she needs a much more powerful sacrifice. Enter the MC, Susan, who is the result of a liaison between a mortal woman and a Sovereign.
This is the second plot strand. As the Winter Solstice approaches, Susan’s links to her father (the Winter King) are growing stronger, and she fights the temptation to assume more of his power and leave the mortal realm behind.
Being part Sovereign, which is to say, potentially very powerful, Susan is the target of said wizard’s machinations. There are a variety of kidnap attempts using a hidden lodge of Masons (I wasn’t sure what they got out of all this as they seemed to get killed quite regularly) and animated statues, because the Wizard is/was in league with a talented sculptress.

The characters weren’t very well fleshed out and while the author is adept at working hard (sometimes a little too hard) to build a sense of time and place, I felt that this often distracted from the plot.
Lastly, it all ends in a bit of an anti-climactic rush in the last twenty pages. It doesn’t feel like there will be another instalment in the series so maybe the author just wanted to get it off his plate.