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joe_mcmahon's review against another edition
3.0
Um. Well.
I initially read "The S. S." (no, not the one you're thinking of) in "101 Years of Entertainment", the Ellery Queen collection of mysteries from 1841 to 1941 sometime in the 1970's-- highly recommended, by the way -- as my introduction to Prince Zaleski. It was improbable but intriguing at the time.
A reread now, 40 years later, and Shiel's prejudices and assumptions are a lot more glaring than they were at the time. The prose is well beyond purple and ultraviolet into the long-wave gamma; it is full of obscure Greek classical references and antique words. I suppose this was meant to be erudite, but it mostly comes off as mannered now.
I did find myself skipping through the long swaths of exposition -- Shiel is not a man afraid of a multi-page paragraph -- but the setup of the stories is quite creative and definitely capable of providing a frisson. Unfortunately the logic of the solutions is either wildly speculative or contrived, and in some cases based on folklore rather than reality, which tends to ruin the impact of the stories.
As an artifact of its time, it was certainly interesting to read, but it's not a book I'll keep on my virtual bookshelf.
I initially read "The S. S." (no, not the one you're thinking of) in "101 Years of Entertainment", the Ellery Queen collection of mysteries from 1841 to 1941 sometime in the 1970's-- highly recommended, by the way -- as my introduction to Prince Zaleski. It was improbable but intriguing at the time.
A reread now, 40 years later, and Shiel's prejudices and assumptions are a lot more glaring than they were at the time. The prose is well beyond purple and ultraviolet into the long-wave gamma; it is full of obscure Greek classical references and antique words. I suppose this was meant to be erudite, but it mostly comes off as mannered now.
I did find myself skipping through the long swaths of exposition -- Shiel is not a man afraid of a multi-page paragraph -- but the setup of the stories is quite creative and definitely capable of providing a frisson. Unfortunately the logic of the solutions is either wildly speculative or contrived, and in some cases based on folklore rather than reality, which tends to ruin the impact of the stories.
As an artifact of its time, it was certainly interesting to read, but it's not a book I'll keep on my virtual bookshelf.
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