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A review by malinowy
Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street by Indrek Hargla
5.0
Clearly these Apothecary Melchior novels are becoming my go-to feel-good read, because I enjoyed this a lot. I read this in 10 chapter installments with my friend and had a lot of fun discussing the plot and coming up with theories on what has happened and why. (Suffice to say, I was pretty off. Like, I had picked one thing that turned out to be significant, but missed quite a lot of others.)
Two men die and soon after a 3rd body turns up as well in the city of Tallinn and it seems like all of them saw a ghost before their death. Melchior with his friends starts to look into things. There are a lot of rumours and folktales (which might have had more truth in them than anyone thought) which were actually pretty interesting. I found the plot overall good, though at times it did feel there was some repetition and focus on irrelevant things a bit too much.
These books seem to have a similar structure every time, so I wasn't too frustrated when the story only got going after 100 or so pages. After all, a lot of foundation was laid before that, you just kind of missed it if you didn't pay attention. And that's what I like about these books, you need to pay attention to what you read if you want to figure out what happened and why. I think reading and discussing this with another person definitely helped that, because this is also one of those books you can easily read in a weekend and then feel stupid at the end when you realize you missed some obvious hints.
Would love to read the entire series so far, but also holding back because what would I then read? Maybe one every few months until the latest novel comes out in Finnish as well.
Two men die and soon after a 3rd body turns up as well in the city of Tallinn and it seems like all of them saw a ghost before their death. Melchior with his friends starts to look into things. There are a lot of rumours and folktales (which might have had more truth in them than anyone thought) which were actually pretty interesting. I found the plot overall good, though at times it did feel there was some repetition and focus on irrelevant things a bit too much.
These books seem to have a similar structure every time, so I wasn't too frustrated when the story only got going after 100 or so pages. After all, a lot of foundation was laid before that, you just kind of missed it if you didn't pay attention. And that's what I like about these books, you need to pay attention to what you read if you want to figure out what happened and why. I think reading and discussing this with another person definitely helped that, because this is also one of those books you can easily read in a weekend and then feel stupid at the end when you realize you missed some obvious hints.
Would love to read the entire series so far, but also holding back because what would I then read? Maybe one every few months until the latest novel comes out in Finnish as well.