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escragg92's review against another edition
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
4.0
showell's review against another edition
3.0
This book has many of the same attributes that I really enjoyed in Speaks the Nightbird, and I suppose not surprisingly, many of the same flaws.
When he wants to, Robert McCammon can really write a great sentence.
Consider the opening line:
"'Twas said better to light a candle than to curse the dark, but in the town of New York in the summer of 1702 one might do both, for the candles were small and the dark was large."
And the closing image:
"How like a maze a fingerprint was, he thought. How like the unknown streets and alleys of a strange city. Curving and circling, ending here and going there, snaking and twisting and cut by a slash. Matthew followed the maze with his glass, deeper and deeper, deeper still. Deeper yet, toward the center of it all."
I picked those two because they were easy to find again, but there are many more lovely sentences like that in this 645-page book. Unfortunately there are also lots of sentences like "The horses were really hauling ass."
It's like two entirely different people wrote this book. I prefer the one with the lovely turns of phrase.
I have sort of the same problem with the characters.
McCammon's Colonial America is vivid, earthy, and fascinating, if at times too crude for my taste. These characters belch and fart and vomit, and for some of them, that's their good behavior. I have trouble reconciling that with the really lovely imagery.
On the other hand, I really like Matthew. He's complex, believable, human without being distressingly crude, & smart, although not necessarily street-smart.
Many of the secondary characters, however, read like crudely developed caricatures. I'm ok with that to a point. It's not possible to make everyone three-dimensional.
But while the men may or may not be fully developed, to a person, for the brief times they are allowed on stage in the story, the women are stereotypes.
You have the wealthy widow entrepreneur who's keeping her husband's business alive, but is going to be simply the money behind the business. Day-to-day operations are run by -- surprise -- one of her husband's old male friends, who may or may not be her current lover.
There's the awkwardly unfashionable but personally lovely wanna-be painter/love interest, who might bring bad luck to everyone around her or who may just be a poseur who prefers to focus on the dramatic events in her daily life.
Rounding out the female cast, there's the nymphomaniac, the redemptive prostitute, and a shadowy fourth figure who will no doubt turn out to be a criminal mastermind (or his love interest/right hand woman) in a future book.
The title character, the Queen of Bedlam, doesn't even appear until page 330. And even then, she is given only one line. Her story is that she has been so traumatized by her past history that she spends her time staring out a window and doesn't speak at all to anyone, except to ask if the king's reply has arrived yet.
At the end of the book, McCammon says something about how the Queen of Bedlam is really New York, but that doesn't actually address my fundamental problem with the way women are treated in this book. The female characters are simply not given the room to breathe that the men are.
This didn't bother me in Speaks the Nightbird, because that book does feature a living breathing vibrant woman at the heart of the story, even if 80% of the book's other population were men. But the woman at the heart of this book, the Queen of Bedlam, is so fixed in space that it highlights how underdeveloped all the women are.
My final problem with this book was that while I really wanted to finish it, I wasn't motivated to pick it up again once I put it down. Some books I can't wait for my next chance to read. This was not one of them. It took me three weeks to read it, in large part because I was content to have one or two days go by without cracking it open. And to only spend an hour or so reading it on the days that I did pick it up.
That said, the story was sufficiently compelling that I didn't want to pick up any other book in its place. So now that I've finished it, I am really having to decide whether or not to get the next in the series. I really like this Matthew guy. I'd like to know what else he's going to do. And the book did close on a strong note with one of those image-ridden sentences that I'm a total sucker for.
Still, I felt kind of the same way about Speaks the Nightbird when I finished it, and when I read the next in the series, the flaws that I forgave in Speaks the Nightbird bothered me quite a bit more. So there's that.
I don't know if I'm going to read the next in the series, but if I do, I'll be sure to tell you about it.
When he wants to, Robert McCammon can really write a great sentence.
Consider the opening line:
"'Twas said better to light a candle than to curse the dark, but in the town of New York in the summer of 1702 one might do both, for the candles were small and the dark was large."
And the closing image:
"How like a maze a fingerprint was, he thought. How like the unknown streets and alleys of a strange city. Curving and circling, ending here and going there, snaking and twisting and cut by a slash. Matthew followed the maze with his glass, deeper and deeper, deeper still. Deeper yet, toward the center of it all."
I picked those two because they were easy to find again, but there are many more lovely sentences like that in this 645-page book. Unfortunately there are also lots of sentences like "The horses were really hauling ass."
It's like two entirely different people wrote this book. I prefer the one with the lovely turns of phrase.
I have sort of the same problem with the characters.
McCammon's Colonial America is vivid, earthy, and fascinating, if at times too crude for my taste. These characters belch and fart and vomit, and for some of them, that's their good behavior. I have trouble reconciling that with the really lovely imagery.
On the other hand, I really like Matthew. He's complex, believable, human without being distressingly crude, & smart, although not necessarily street-smart.
Many of the secondary characters, however, read like crudely developed caricatures. I'm ok with that to a point. It's not possible to make everyone three-dimensional.
But while the men may or may not be fully developed, to a person, for the brief times they are allowed on stage in the story, the women are stereotypes.
You have the wealthy widow entrepreneur who's keeping her husband's business alive, but is going to be simply the money behind the business. Day-to-day operations are run by -- surprise -- one of her husband's old male friends, who may or may not be her current lover.
There's the awkwardly unfashionable but personally lovely wanna-be painter/love interest, who might bring bad luck to everyone around her or who may just be a poseur who prefers to focus on the dramatic events in her daily life.
Rounding out the female cast, there's the nymphomaniac, the redemptive prostitute, and a shadowy fourth figure who will no doubt turn out to be a criminal mastermind (or his love interest/right hand woman) in a future book.
The title character, the Queen of Bedlam, doesn't even appear until page 330. And even then, she is given only one line. Her story is that she has been so traumatized by her past history that she spends her time staring out a window and doesn't speak at all to anyone, except to ask if the king's reply has arrived yet.
At the end of the book, McCammon says something about how the Queen of Bedlam is really New York, but that doesn't actually address my fundamental problem with the way women are treated in this book. The female characters are simply not given the room to breathe that the men are.
This didn't bother me in Speaks the Nightbird, because that book does feature a living breathing vibrant woman at the heart of the story, even if 80% of the book's other population were men. But the woman at the heart of this book, the Queen of Bedlam, is so fixed in space that it highlights how underdeveloped all the women are.
My final problem with this book was that while I really wanted to finish it, I wasn't motivated to pick it up again once I put it down. Some books I can't wait for my next chance to read. This was not one of them. It took me three weeks to read it, in large part because I was content to have one or two days go by without cracking it open. And to only spend an hour or so reading it on the days that I did pick it up.
That said, the story was sufficiently compelling that I didn't want to pick up any other book in its place. So now that I've finished it, I am really having to decide whether or not to get the next in the series. I really like this Matthew guy. I'd like to know what else he's going to do. And the book did close on a strong note with one of those image-ridden sentences that I'm a total sucker for.
Still, I felt kind of the same way about Speaks the Nightbird when I finished it, and when I read the next in the series, the flaws that I forgave in Speaks the Nightbird bothered me quite a bit more. So there's that.
I don't know if I'm going to read the next in the series, but if I do, I'll be sure to tell you about it.
mnyberg's review against another edition
5.0
Matthew Corbett is a new favorite character of mine. We are introduced to him in the first book with a glimpse of his potential. This follow up story establishes Corbett as a young Sherlock Holmes set in an earlier era. Bright, determined, but not infallible. This book builds on the first story, but can be read as a stand alone.
marklidstone's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent follow up to "Speaks the Nightbird". Wonderful book.
ianl1963's review against another edition
3.0
Inane word play, incongruous language, whimsy and yet quite enthralling.
ericfreemantx's review against another edition
4.0
Another rollicking entry in the series. Enjoyed the escape...
veronica87's review against another edition
4.0
It's now 1702, three years after young Matthew Corbett solved the mystery of the first novel. He's now 23 years old and clerking for a magistrate in New York, still a burgeoning little town of only a few thousand residents travelling mostly dirt roads. Matthew soon finds himself embroiled in a new mystery - and possibly facing a different future than the one he'd always envisioned for himself - when a couple of prominent men are found murdered in similar fashion.
While I like the setting of the story and the author does a commendable job of portraying life in colonial America, I'm still not sure I entirely like Matthew. A lot of the time I find him arrogant, irritating, and a bit hypocritical. He will hound people with questions, even if it's about something personal and thus none of his business, demanding that they answer him but when someone asks him questions he bristles or else decides it's not necessary to answer. He feels entitled to everyone else's secrets but no one is entitled to his. He also thinks he's smarter than anyone else, a belief that he uses to elevate himself above those around him, the "weak minded" (as he internally refers to another character who is not book smart but who has a lot of real world experience in the profession to which Matthew aspires). And yet, upon his first meeting with a new character he openly informs that character that she perhaps uses her "curse" as a way to place herself above the mundane events and people around her. That's the pot calling the kettle black. I actually only really like Matthew when he's just going about normal life and isn't doing anything necessarily connected to the mystery.
That said, now that Matthew seems to be permanently based in New York, the story introduces several new characters that I hope stick around and become fixtures in Matthew's life. I feel strongly that they may be a means to making Matthew less insufferable. In any event, I liked them all more than I do Matthew.
As for the mystery angle, there are actually a few mysteries going on...some more connected to the central murders while others are just a side plot. The cases were interesting, though the side plot mystery was pretty transparent. I was actually a bit sad about how the murder mystery played out. I was hoping for a different ending, I guess.
I'll move on to the next book in the series because I do like the writing style, the time period, and the introduction of some colorful, secondary characters. Those all help to compensate for an irritating ( to me) main character. It's also of note that the author intended the first book to be a stand-alone story. It was only a few years after its publication that the author decided to re-visit Matthew Corbett and make a series out of it. It's therefore evident in this installment that elements of a long arc have been put in place and I'm curious to see that play out.
P.S. And if, like me, you've been wondering about the fate of Fount Royal, the setting of the first book, you get the answer here.
While I like the setting of the story and the author does a commendable job of portraying life in colonial America, I'm still not sure I entirely like Matthew. A lot of the time I find him arrogant, irritating, and a bit hypocritical. He will hound people with questions, even if it's about something personal and thus none of his business, demanding that they answer him but when someone asks him questions he bristles or else decides it's not necessary to answer. He feels entitled to everyone else's secrets but no one is entitled to his. He also thinks he's smarter than anyone else, a belief that he uses to elevate himself above those around him, the "weak minded" (as he internally refers to another character who is not book smart but who has a lot of real world experience in the profession to which Matthew aspires). And yet, upon his first meeting with a new character he openly informs that character that she perhaps uses her "curse" as a way to place herself above the mundane events and people around her. That's the pot calling the kettle black. I actually only really like Matthew when he's just going about normal life and isn't doing anything necessarily connected to the mystery.
That said, now that Matthew seems to be permanently based in New York, the story introduces several new characters that I hope stick around and become fixtures in Matthew's life. I feel strongly that they may be a means to making Matthew less insufferable. In any event, I liked them all more than I do Matthew.
As for the mystery angle, there are actually a few mysteries going on...some more connected to the central murders while others are just a side plot. The cases were interesting, though the side plot mystery was pretty transparent. I was actually a bit sad about how the murder mystery played out. I was hoping for a different ending, I guess.
I'll move on to the next book in the series because I do like the writing style, the time period, and the introduction of some colorful, secondary characters. Those all help to compensate for an irritating ( to me) main character. It's also of note that the author intended the first book to be a stand-alone story. It was only a few years after its publication that the author decided to re-visit Matthew Corbett and make a series out of it. It's therefore evident in this installment that elements of a long arc have been put in place and I'm curious to see that play out.
P.S. And if, like me, you've been wondering about the fate of Fount Royal, the setting of the first book, you get the answer here.
iam_griff's review against another edition
4.0
This is the 2nd in the Matthew Corbett series & am enjoying majority of the story. The character Matthew is very different that the "hard-boiled" detectives I normally read that are tough guys with wise mouths. McCammon's writing style is amazing with how his plots are tied together in ways I couldn't figure out. I do plan on continuing the series & recommend reading the first book.