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A review by deehaichess
The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette
3.0
Disappointingly, this was not an effortless read for me. I think I expected it to be this brilliant experience, and instead it was just ok. I liked it more at the end than I was liking it half way through, but unfortunately it ended just when it seemed to be getting good!
As the author explains in the extensive and confusing forward notes that I didn't actually read, The Bone Key is a collection of short stories. I'm used to such books being about different people, all with a similar theme tying the stories together, and I'm not sure what was gained by writing about the same character, the retiring, social pariah Mr. Booth. He only seemed to be starting to grow in the second to last and last stories, and the lack of character maturation in the preceding stories was possibly part of why I had to encourage myself through to the end of this anthology. I found his painfully shy personality novel at first but even across a dozen short stories it got a little old fairly quickly.
Of course, if one of Monette's main aims was to evoke that particular style and sense of Gothic literature of Poe's ilk, she certainly hit bang on the mark. The supernatural elements are suitably atmospheric, and tinged with that sense of inevitable hair-raising doom that Poe's tales always had, but her writing was light and quick and erudite and her cast of peripheral characters were outstandingly drawn and often more interesting than the titular character himself. Possibly the point? I can't be sure, but certainly I recall Poe's narrators were never possessed of excessive personality either.
As an exercise in literary style, kudos to Monette. As something to entertain myself reading, it shouldn't have been as much of a chore to read as I seemed to find it. I think if she'd developed the character more over the course of the stories I probably would have been more engaged.
As the author explains in the extensive and confusing forward notes that I didn't actually read, The Bone Key is a collection of short stories. I'm used to such books being about different people, all with a similar theme tying the stories together, and I'm not sure what was gained by writing about the same character, the retiring, social pariah Mr. Booth. He only seemed to be starting to grow in the second to last and last stories, and the lack of character maturation in the preceding stories was possibly part of why I had to encourage myself through to the end of this anthology. I found his painfully shy personality novel at first but even across a dozen short stories it got a little old fairly quickly.
Of course, if one of Monette's main aims was to evoke that particular style and sense of Gothic literature of Poe's ilk, she certainly hit bang on the mark. The supernatural elements are suitably atmospheric, and tinged with that sense of inevitable hair-raising doom that Poe's tales always had, but her writing was light and quick and erudite and her cast of peripheral characters were outstandingly drawn and often more interesting than the titular character himself. Possibly the point? I can't be sure, but certainly I recall Poe's narrators were never possessed of excessive personality either.
As an exercise in literary style, kudos to Monette. As something to entertain myself reading, it shouldn't have been as much of a chore to read as I seemed to find it. I think if she'd developed the character more over the course of the stories I probably would have been more engaged.