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meeners's review
4.0
in this book as in the first, i had to struggle quite a lot to reconcile myself to the fundamental world-building premise - in this case, that the snow queen fairy tale could be plausibly transformed into "real" life but that it could also function as a fairy tale, with all of the fairy tale's dark symbolic power. i am still not quite reconciled to it, not least because the addition of the snow queen meant that all of the hard questions (and their ambitious social relevance) raised in the first book were swept to the sidelines in favor of individual conflict and catharsis in this one. i do hope there will be a third book, if only because i think it could give jenny davidson a chance to bring these two very different arcs together at last. i also hope sophie goes back to being the awesome crime-solving sleuth and promising social activist she was in the first book. in this one, things happen to sophie, without her having much power to do anything back.
still, i did love reading this because (again) i love sophie so much. just look at the moment when she finally confronts elsa:
Sophie's heart began pounding, and she had to stop herself from turning and beginning to run. Suddenly she felt too cold and tired to be afraid. She was filled with the conviction that Mikael needed her now, not after a lot of palaver about Elsa Blix's elaborate schemes and weapons and peace and whatever it was about Sophie's personal history that had led to her getting caught up in this absurd narrative featuring world-historical players like Niels Bohr and Alfred Nobel and Elsa Blix herself.
reading the above, i found myself thinking back to connie willis' all clear and the part when eileen sees polly, at the moment that is the end of everything and the beginning of everything, too. eileen has so much terrible knowledge of what has happened and what is to come, but what she thinks, in that moment, is this: "Oh, Polly, we're going to be such good friends!" love and goodness and sacrifice and peace, embodied so exquisitely in a single line. like eileen, sophie is a good person, in a way that is not at all simple or easy, and it is sophie as a character that made this book work for me.
that, and interactions like these:
"I don't understand how you came to be here, Sophie," Mikael said, his voice stronger now.
"It took me many days of travel," she said softly, and then, irrepressibly: "I was traveling by reindeer!"
a third book please!
p.s. HATE HATE HATE the cover, not only because it is bland bland bland (with a bland bland bland model) but because it is so different from the cover of the first book. wtf????
still, i did love reading this because (again) i love sophie so much. just look at the moment when she finally confronts elsa:
Sophie's heart began pounding, and she had to stop herself from turning and beginning to run. Suddenly she felt too cold and tired to be afraid. She was filled with the conviction that Mikael needed her now, not after a lot of palaver about Elsa Blix's elaborate schemes and weapons and peace and whatever it was about Sophie's personal history that had led to her getting caught up in this absurd narrative featuring world-historical players like Niels Bohr and Alfred Nobel and Elsa Blix herself.
reading the above, i found myself thinking back to connie willis' all clear and the part when eileen sees polly, at the moment that is the end of everything and the beginning of everything, too. eileen has so much terrible knowledge of what has happened and what is to come, but what she thinks, in that moment, is this: "Oh, Polly, we're going to be such good friends!" love and goodness and sacrifice and peace, embodied so exquisitely in a single line. like eileen, sophie is a good person, in a way that is not at all simple or easy, and it is sophie as a character that made this book work for me.
that, and interactions like these:
"I don't understand how you came to be here, Sophie," Mikael said, his voice stronger now.
"It took me many days of travel," she said softly, and then, irrepressibly: "I was traveling by reindeer!"
a third book please!
p.s. HATE HATE HATE the cover, not only because it is bland bland bland (with a bland bland bland model) but because it is so different from the cover of the first book. wtf????
singinglight's review
3.0
I really enjoyed The Explosionist–alternate history! mysteries! Scotland!–and so I was expecting to have the same reaction to Invisible Things. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly as entranced. I’m not sure exactly why this is, and plenty of other reviewers have liked it just as much as the first book, so take my reaction with a heaping pinch of salt. But the sudden weaving in of a certain fairy tale was sort of jolting, and I found Sophie less sympathetic.
panxa's review
3.0
Not a bad book, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the first. Almost zero paranormal/spiritualism, which seems like a waste since Sophie was shown to be such an incredible medium in book one. I also found Mikael tedious, and wasn't at all invested in his rescue. And after the reveal of the IRLYNS in book one, the atom bomb seems a let down. We have those in this timeline, so having basically the same thing in Sophie's time, compared to some of the other technology Davidson alludes to, seems unimaginative.
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