lizmck 's review for:

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
3.0

Great concept, but lacking something in the execution. If someone read this book who wasn't already familiar with Sherlock Holmes, I don't think they would understand or enjoy it.

Many of the mysteries just rapidly solved themselves, and there were no scenes of Crow doing any Sherlockian deduction to show how the murder was accomplished. In the world of the novel, angels apparently can't leave their place of habitation, which meant that Crow went missing for anything that happened outside London.

Many tantalizing hints of worldbuilding that weren't sufficiently developed. I would have liked an entire chapter on Victoria's Needle, or a glimpse of the angels of Madrid.

Favorite lines:

Major Smith bustled into the square, snapping questions without waiting for answers and bringing with him a sense of anxiety that he probably thought of as urgency, if he noticed it at all. I recognized his type immediately, having encountered it among both doctors and military officers. He would never get the best out of his men, and he would never know why.


Spot on. I have had bosses exactly like that.