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3.24 AVERAGE
3.24 AVERAGE
I just couldn't get into this. It seems like a cool idea, but the execution was boring at best
Great premise, lackluster execution.
Underdeveloped characters.
Name dropping abundance.
So much potential but truly fell short.
Underdeveloped characters.
Name dropping abundance.
So much potential but truly fell short.
Fantastic. I read it for my Medieval Literature class after we read Dante's Inferno.
I skimmed this. This book is slow, plodding and quite frankly boring. The author really took that phrase "show don't tell" and threw it out the window. All he did was tell. Every emotion, every action, it was told clearly and named. Every character is named way too repetitively and there is very few pronouns used. The writing comes out stilted and the dialogue is cringeworthy. I just recently read another historical fiction mystery from the same time period but in England, and that writing while simplistic and also a bit stilted in terms of dialogue, it was still a great deal more entertaining. The Yard had characters that were relatively distinct, a mystery that was compelling, and a quick pace. And the historical aspect was intriguing.
Here, the characters are all unlikeable and interchangeable. There is so many different elements thrown into this story but not really addressed. Did this want to be serious historical fiction, a literary and brainy analysis of classic fiction, or a fun thriller? It tried to be all at once and failed spectacularly. In the end, skimming through this was necessary just to finish the challenge I needed this book for, but I would have dnfed it 50 pages in otherwise. The murders are barely part of this story for the first hundred pages, bogged down with literary discussions between pretentious professors, who are fighting even more pretentious academic officials and presidents over the value of Dante. I like Dante. A lot. I'm one of those classic book nerds who loves old epic style poems like Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Beowulf, The Canterbury Tale by Chaucer, the old Arthurian myths, and the Divine Comedy. I genuinely read them for fun. But after this I think I was mildly annoyed by the idea of Dante and all classic literature because this book made me question my enjoyment of those past reads. This takes everything I hate about the English major, and why I dropped it for an anthropology major, by overanalyzing a work of classic fiction to death in a way that made my brain hurt. I've read other books using the Dante motif and theme to frame it around a murder mystery better then this book did.
I barely read the rest of the book. I skimmed through the pages and looked for the important mystery related stuff that didn't bore me to tears. And I mostly tuned out the dialogue cause it was painful.
Here, the characters are all unlikeable and interchangeable. There is so many different elements thrown into this story but not really addressed. Did this want to be serious historical fiction, a literary and brainy analysis of classic fiction, or a fun thriller? It tried to be all at once and failed spectacularly. In the end, skimming through this was necessary just to finish the challenge I needed this book for, but I would have dnfed it 50 pages in otherwise. The murders are barely part of this story for the first hundred pages, bogged down with literary discussions between pretentious professors, who are fighting even more pretentious academic officials and presidents over the value of Dante. I like Dante. A lot. I'm one of those classic book nerds who loves old epic style poems like Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Beowulf, The Canterbury Tale by Chaucer, the old Arthurian myths, and the Divine Comedy. I genuinely read them for fun. But after this I think I was mildly annoyed by the idea of Dante and all classic literature because this book made me question my enjoyment of those past reads. This takes everything I hate about the English major, and why I dropped it for an anthropology major, by overanalyzing a work of classic fiction to death in a way that made my brain hurt. I've read other books using the Dante motif and theme to frame it around a murder mystery better then this book did.
I barely read the rest of the book. I skimmed through the pages and looked for the important mystery related stuff that didn't bore me to tears. And I mostly tuned out the dialogue cause it was painful.
I thought this was quite an enjoyable read, but none of Pearl's following books seem to have whatever it was that made this one so compelling.
Unfortunately I'm going to have to give this a thumbs down. I made it to page 70 and I usually will wait until well past 100 before I do so, however this book clearly needs an editor! It's weighty in it's descriptions of the Dante Club featuring Harvards best, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, etc. and just simply plods along and jumps around into such vague areas I can hardly tell where I am at in the book. With that said, I think the premise for the story being that of these great literary giants translating Dante's Inferno along with a serial killer as re-enacting the inferno is ambitious and interesting. However the execution is excrutiatingly painful and must put this down. I do wish the writing was better.
This book came highly recommended to me as a literary mystery featuring some of the 19th century's most notable poets, but unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations either as an exploration of the literary community or as a mystery. Dull, slow, overwrought, and plodding, with a cast of characters who should be entertaining but are barely distinguishable from one another (aside from Nicholas Rey, who was barely on the page compared to the others.) Not to mention the cast of characters is deeply lacking in women who are written as distinct people rather than maids, wives, secretaries, set pieces or accessories. Also worth mentioning, for a book about a group of poets, it's devoid of all captivating language or imagery, instead relying on overcomplicated prose that clearly pats itself on the back for sounding historically accurate.
I just couldn't get into this book at all. I got about maybe seventy pages in before I decided I didn't really want to read it anymore.
A lot of the beginning also seemed to happen way too quickly and I missed a lot of it - or maybe I wasn't paying attention. Despite the really gruesome murder though, the story spent a good deal of time with some egotistical old, white men who talked about Dante a lot. I get that the book is "The Dante Club", but I wasn't seeing yet how they connected to the murder, and it was just so abrupt to go from such an intense murder, to such a boring club. It's super boring despite being a murder mystery.
Plus, I kept getting a lot of the characters confused. All of them were famous poets, I believe. Or maybe just one of them. I don't remember. They all sort of blended into each other.
A weird issue I had was some of their names though. One was named Holmes, which I get is a rather normal name, but it still felt a bit like Pearl specifically named him Holmes after Sherlock Holmes. And another character was named George Washington Something (I don't remember his last name). Pearl deliberately named these characters after famous people. It's weird. Unless, of course, these people actually were real people, in which case please disregard this paragraph.
I just have too many other books to read that I didn't feel like getting much farther into this one.
A lot of the beginning also seemed to happen way too quickly and I missed a lot of it - or maybe I wasn't paying attention. Despite the really gruesome murder though, the story spent a good deal of time with some egotistical old, white men who talked about Dante a lot. I get that the book is "The Dante Club", but I wasn't seeing yet how they connected to the murder, and it was just so abrupt to go from such an intense murder, to such a boring club. It's super boring despite being a murder mystery.
Plus, I kept getting a lot of the characters confused. All of them were famous poets, I believe. Or maybe just one of them. I don't remember. They all sort of blended into each other.
A weird issue I had was some of their names though. One was named Holmes, which I get is a rather normal name, but it still felt a bit like Pearl specifically named him Holmes after Sherlock Holmes. And another character was named George Washington Something (I don't remember his last name). Pearl deliberately named these characters after famous people. It's weird. Unless, of course, these people actually were real people, in which case please disregard this paragraph.
I just have too many other books to read that I didn't feel like getting much farther into this one.
DENSE. Interesting concept. I wanted to persevere, but I ran out of steam near the end. The writing was great, though.