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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
I was so excited at the start of Laura Carlin’s The Wicked Cometh. A great setting (the slums of Regency London), a promising heroine Hester White (a young woman fallen on hard times but desperate to escape it), an intriguing mystery of disappearing people. The build-up was slow and effective. There were enough hints given by the author that all is not as it seems and you could sense the menacing darkness creeping in. We get a good grip on Hester, her needs and wants, her relationship with the secondary characters and her growing attraction to Rebekah Brock.
It was this relationship that could have lifted this book to another level, and Hester certainly made it come alive. It was mysterious Rebekah who left me wanting as she remained under developed. As the story progressed, the plot went from interesting to contrived, and I lost hope for the two of them. There was no further build-up, no ignited passion and it all became rather drab.
The final plot twist was such a shocker that I was ready to fling the book out the window right there and then (good thing it was an epub ;-). The denouement was spoiled when the author resorted to tell us what happened rather than letting us feel it, which would have made so much difference. (Was it tacked on? Because it feels like it was). I was left totally unsatisfied by it. Where was the editor?
I don’t want to be too harsh on Carlin as this is her debut. There were parts that were truly inspired but unfortunately it wasn’t constant throughout the book. In any case, there is genuine talent here and room to grow, so time will tell. I did buy her next novel to see how she holds up.
f/f
3.2 Stars
It was this relationship that could have lifted this book to another level, and Hester certainly made it come alive. It was mysterious Rebekah who left me wanting as she remained under developed. As the story progressed, the plot went from interesting to contrived, and I lost hope for the two of them. There was no further build-up, no ignited passion and it all became rather drab.
The final plot twist was such a shocker that I was ready to fling the book out the window right there and then (good thing it was an epub ;-). The denouement was spoiled when the author resorted to tell us what happened rather than letting us feel it, which would have made so much difference. (Was it tacked on? Because it feels like it was). I was left totally unsatisfied by it. Where was the editor?
I don’t want to be too harsh on Carlin as this is her debut. There were parts that were truly inspired but unfortunately it wasn’t constant throughout the book. In any case, there is genuine talent here and room to grow, so time will tell. I did buy her next novel to see how she holds up.
f/f
3.2 Stars
This could have been a great book but the author kept stopping the action for lengthy explanations from some of the characters, to pad out the plot. Too much tell, not enough show.
I have very mixed feelings about this book.
On the one hand it’s beautifully written; a dark, detailed and twisted tale with a streak of love shining right through the centre. Hester & Rebekah’s love for each other was built up subtly & realistically, the suspense of the narrative was drawn out just enough to keep me guessing but not so much I got bored waiting for the plot to thicken.
But on the other hand the ending felt a little rushed; even though it was a happy ending I would have preferred to see more of the two reuniting. Also as it does have a high level of detail whether it’s the sky, a room or a gross medical situation (and also dead bodies) I did feel very icky reading some parts which altered my position on the rest of the book.
Overall it was readable but I’m not going to re-read it
On the one hand it’s beautifully written; a dark, detailed and twisted tale with a streak of love shining right through the centre. Hester & Rebekah’s love for each other was built up subtly & realistically, the suspense of the narrative was drawn out just enough to keep me guessing but not so much I got bored waiting for the plot to thicken.
But on the other hand the ending felt a little rushed; even though it was a happy ending I would have preferred to see more of the two reuniting. Also as it does have a high level of detail whether it’s the sky, a room or a gross medical situation (and also dead bodies) I did feel very icky reading some parts which altered my position on the rest of the book.
Overall it was readable but I’m not going to re-read it
I always enjoy train journeys, they give me a chance to really sit down and read. As such I finished this book in a little over three hours, so roughly 100 pages per hour.
This book is an easy one to read, though it's subject matter is quite macabre. For me, I don't think the book went quite dark enough - it took me a very long time to work out what the underlying plot was (I thought it was an inheritance ploy) and when the book reached those parts it just didn't have the element of shock that I'd expect.
The romance subplot on the other hand is well done, the dawning realisations seemed realistic and legitimate rather than serving as a plot device. I did think the ending was a tad saccharine sweet though...
My main fault with this book, however has to be the small community feel. Despite bring set in various locales everyone seemed to have links with everyone else. I'm not saying that that can't happen, but it just felt a tad too convenient.
Overall though the book really grabbed my attention, but I'm not sure if it will necessarily stick with me.
This book is an easy one to read, though it's subject matter is quite macabre. For me, I don't think the book went quite dark enough - it took me a very long time to work out what the underlying plot was (I thought it was an inheritance ploy) and when the book reached those parts it just didn't have the element of shock that I'd expect.
The romance subplot on the other hand is well done, the dawning realisations seemed realistic and legitimate rather than serving as a plot device. I did think the ending was a tad saccharine sweet though...
My main fault with this book, however has to be the small community feel. Despite bring set in various locales everyone seemed to have links with everyone else. I'm not saying that that can't happen, but it just felt a tad too convenient.
Overall though the book really grabbed my attention, but I'm not sure if it will necessarily stick with me.
Parts of this I loved, however I had issues with the pacing and there was a disturbing scene involving torture of an animal.
I couldn't help making comparisons with Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which is rather unfair to this novel. It is set in the 1830s, when the poor were considered 'lesser humans' without purpose in society. The purpose they are put to is quite disturbing and creates some of the more Gothic scenes in this novel. Befitting the genre there are also role reversals, twins separated at birth, and questions over parentage. The language is wonderfully evocative, though occasionally a little florid.
[Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for kindly providing me with an eARC of the book via NetGalley – I greatly appreciate the opportunity to read and review titles prior to their release, but this does not affect my overall opinion or review of the book itself.]
The Wicked Cometh marks a departure for me – it’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve chosen to read a book that has no hint of fantasy or magic, and is purely historical fiction, albeit with a generous helping of the Gothic. The Wicked Cometh is the kind of historical fiction I enjoy – it doesn’t sugarcoat or glorify the Victorian age, instead it presents a London that is more about the blood and excrement in the back alleys of the busy thoroughfares than the refined drawing rooms of the elite in society. It proclaims to be “a novel of darkest London” and this book goes to some very dark places indeed, with the book opening with its protagonist, a parson’s daughter, now down-and-out, Hester White, asleep in an outside shed with only the ragged clothes she’s wearing as protection against the cold wind of the night that whistles through the slums in which she lives, a slum from which many people are going missing, with no explanation, or concern raised. What emerges from this less than auspicious start, via the fortuitous happenstance of a carriage accident putting Hester in the path of the aristocratic Brocks, is a story about how far it is possible to rise and fall and what nature of crimes both the upper and under classes commit in everyday life. It concerns the question of the period – can the lower classes be educated and, therefore, have a better “value” in the eyes of the government and society at large? These macrocosmic concerns are, naturally, dealt with through the journey of the novel’s protagonist Hester, as she meets some unsavoury characters along the way, in the slums and drawing rooms alike.
My real delight in The Wicked Cometh was in the setting. London can sometimes be glorified as a bustling metropolis full of industry and commerce, but it also has its flip side, it is the home of the darker, more insidious stories such as Oliver Twist and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the den of rapscallions and rogues where truly evil deeds are committed right under the noses of the police force, perhaps even aided by it. Descriptions of this London always hold a place in my heart – and Carlin’s novel is no exception. There are some stunningly evocative descriptive sections during which I could practically feel the stifling fog through which Hester moved, the stench rising from the gutters she crossed, the sound of footsteps on cobble stones behind her as she was hotly pursued by brutes. This all culminated to present a very gripping and atmospheric world into which it was easy to sink and devour the story as it unfolded.
As far as characters go, Hester White was an intriguing protagonist. The use of first-person narrator means we are never far from her innermost thoughts and feelings, which undoubtedly aids a reader to develop empathy for her trials and tribulations. Hester is inclined towards the hyperbolic as, I’m sure, we all are on occasion. However, it did slightly draw me out of the story at certain moments because her reaction seemed so overblown and heightened in its phrasing that it felt fake – I suddenly became very aware I was reading a crafted novel where, I’m sure, the author carefully crafted a beautiful, if over-dramatic, turn of phrase. Given that Hester can easily slip between “London vowels” (whatever they are) and a more aristocratic way of speaking, perhaps this heightened inner monologue is just the author’s way of illustrating it.
I’m afraid that the reason I didn’t quite love this novel was purely down to narrative style, which is a matter of taste. Carlin does extremely well at emulating the tones of, especially, Charles Dickens in her sentence structures and lexical choices, but she does almost too well (for me) because her narrative also falls into a more sedate pacing that is common in 500-plus-page nineteenth-century novels. However, given the dark and twisted subject matter of just how little valued the underclasses of Victorian London are (or, rather, where their value lies – the concept of which, I loved), the plot often felt hampered by the narrative style which didn’t have quite as much urgency or suspense-building as I would have liked. It just didn’t quite work for me. Also, this is the third book in a row I’ve read (of all different genres) where the author chooses to tell the story in present, as opposed to the more commonplace past, tense… for no apparent reason. It doesn’t particularly aid the story in any way, it just creates a somewhat jarring effect for the first few pages, and meant I took longer than I ordinarily would to slip fully inside the world of the story, which I’m sure is the precise opposite effect of what telling a story in the present tense is meant to do.
Overall, this was an extremely interesting concept which, for me, fell down slightly in execution. However, for any readers who enjoy authors such as Sarah Waters and Sarah Perry and Dickensian tales of the murky, deplorable backstreets of Victorian London, complete with ne’er-do-wells and bodysnatchers, The Wicked Cometh is an accomplished debut novel with solid characterisation and plotting that promises stunning things to come from Laura Carlin in the future.
The Wicked Cometh marks a departure for me – it’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve chosen to read a book that has no hint of fantasy or magic, and is purely historical fiction, albeit with a generous helping of the Gothic. The Wicked Cometh is the kind of historical fiction I enjoy – it doesn’t sugarcoat or glorify the Victorian age, instead it presents a London that is more about the blood and excrement in the back alleys of the busy thoroughfares than the refined drawing rooms of the elite in society. It proclaims to be “a novel of darkest London” and this book goes to some very dark places indeed, with the book opening with its protagonist, a parson’s daughter, now down-and-out, Hester White, asleep in an outside shed with only the ragged clothes she’s wearing as protection against the cold wind of the night that whistles through the slums in which she lives, a slum from which many people are going missing, with no explanation, or concern raised. What emerges from this less than auspicious start, via the fortuitous happenstance of a carriage accident putting Hester in the path of the aristocratic Brocks, is a story about how far it is possible to rise and fall and what nature of crimes both the upper and under classes commit in everyday life. It concerns the question of the period – can the lower classes be educated and, therefore, have a better “value” in the eyes of the government and society at large? These macrocosmic concerns are, naturally, dealt with through the journey of the novel’s protagonist Hester, as she meets some unsavoury characters along the way, in the slums and drawing rooms alike.
My real delight in The Wicked Cometh was in the setting. London can sometimes be glorified as a bustling metropolis full of industry and commerce, but it also has its flip side, it is the home of the darker, more insidious stories such as Oliver Twist and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the den of rapscallions and rogues where truly evil deeds are committed right under the noses of the police force, perhaps even aided by it. Descriptions of this London always hold a place in my heart – and Carlin’s novel is no exception. There are some stunningly evocative descriptive sections during which I could practically feel the stifling fog through which Hester moved, the stench rising from the gutters she crossed, the sound of footsteps on cobble stones behind her as she was hotly pursued by brutes. This all culminated to present a very gripping and atmospheric world into which it was easy to sink and devour the story as it unfolded.
As far as characters go, Hester White was an intriguing protagonist. The use of first-person narrator means we are never far from her innermost thoughts and feelings, which undoubtedly aids a reader to develop empathy for her trials and tribulations. Hester is inclined towards the hyperbolic as, I’m sure, we all are on occasion. However, it did slightly draw me out of the story at certain moments because her reaction seemed so overblown and heightened in its phrasing that it felt fake – I suddenly became very aware I was reading a crafted novel where, I’m sure, the author carefully crafted a beautiful, if over-dramatic, turn of phrase. Given that Hester can easily slip between “London vowels” (whatever they are) and a more aristocratic way of speaking, perhaps this heightened inner monologue is just the author’s way of illustrating it.
I’m afraid that the reason I didn’t quite love this novel was purely down to narrative style, which is a matter of taste. Carlin does extremely well at emulating the tones of, especially, Charles Dickens in her sentence structures and lexical choices, but she does almost too well (for me) because her narrative also falls into a more sedate pacing that is common in 500-plus-page nineteenth-century novels. However, given the dark and twisted subject matter of just how little valued the underclasses of Victorian London are (or, rather, where their value lies – the concept of which, I loved), the plot often felt hampered by the narrative style which didn’t have quite as much urgency or suspense-building as I would have liked. It just didn’t quite work for me. Also, this is the third book in a row I’ve read (of all different genres) where the author chooses to tell the story in present, as opposed to the more commonplace past, tense… for no apparent reason. It doesn’t particularly aid the story in any way, it just creates a somewhat jarring effect for the first few pages, and meant I took longer than I ordinarily would to slip fully inside the world of the story, which I’m sure is the precise opposite effect of what telling a story in the present tense is meant to do.
Overall, this was an extremely interesting concept which, for me, fell down slightly in execution. However, for any readers who enjoy authors such as Sarah Waters and Sarah Perry and Dickensian tales of the murky, deplorable backstreets of Victorian London, complete with ne’er-do-wells and bodysnatchers, The Wicked Cometh is an accomplished debut novel with solid characterisation and plotting that promises stunning things to come from Laura Carlin in the future.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Wicked Cometh is a dark, gritty Victorian tale centering on heroine Hester White and her attempts to escape a life in the slums. All the while, whispers of wicked and dangerous acts appear to be happening to the poorest of the community, with people mysteriously disappearing. Thrust into upper society after a chance accident, Hester falls under the tutelage of the charismatic Rebekah as the pair set out to uncover what's really going on.
The descriptions of Victorian London within the novel are fantastic. Everything is vividly brought to life in wonderful detail and was very atmospheric. It's very easy to immerse yourself in Hester's world, and I got fully wrapped up in the gritty, dark London slums.
Hester is a great character. She's determined, and not one to wallow in self pity. She's practical and straight forward, but also an opportunist with a good heart. She's the perfect heroine for this kind of story, as she was interesting enough to carry the tale without being boring or overly unrealistic. However, she is quite simplistic in nature, without much emotional depth. Rebekah is the more complicated character. She's intelligent, and desperate to voice her views in a male dominated society that doesn't seem so far out of character for a woman of this era. Their combined relationship is also really strong, gradually building over time into something genuine and lovely. This was definitely the strongest aspect of the novel.
My main issues with the novel are the pacing, which is very stop and start in places (particuarly the middle) and the ending - which falls very flat. I found it didn't really work with regards to the rest of the feel of the book. It was far fatched, unbelievable and felt like a let down compared to the wonderful writing that proceeded it.
Read for the great descriptions of London and a strong female relationship.
The Wicked Cometh is a dark, gritty Victorian tale centering on heroine Hester White and her attempts to escape a life in the slums. All the while, whispers of wicked and dangerous acts appear to be happening to the poorest of the community, with people mysteriously disappearing. Thrust into upper society after a chance accident, Hester falls under the tutelage of the charismatic Rebekah as the pair set out to uncover what's really going on.
The descriptions of Victorian London within the novel are fantastic. Everything is vividly brought to life in wonderful detail and was very atmospheric. It's very easy to immerse yourself in Hester's world, and I got fully wrapped up in the gritty, dark London slums.
Hester is a great character. She's determined, and not one to wallow in self pity. She's practical and straight forward, but also an opportunist with a good heart. She's the perfect heroine for this kind of story, as she was interesting enough to carry the tale without being boring or overly unrealistic. However, she is quite simplistic in nature, without much emotional depth. Rebekah is the more complicated character. She's intelligent, and desperate to voice her views in a male dominated society that doesn't seem so far out of character for a woman of this era. Their combined relationship is also really strong, gradually building over time into something genuine and lovely. This was definitely the strongest aspect of the novel.
My main issues with the novel are the pacing, which is very stop and start in places (particuarly the middle) and the ending - which falls very flat. I found it didn't really work with regards to the rest of the feel of the book. It was far fatched, unbelievable and felt like a let down compared to the wonderful writing that proceeded it.
Read for the great descriptions of London and a strong female relationship.
What I really enjoyed was the setting. The description of London during that time was in detail and the atmosphere was done wonderfully. The story I enjoyed in parts. I am not too sure that the ending worked for me, seemed a bit rush compared to the story itself which was quite long in places.