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A review by dembury
Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King
2.0
As a teenager I read this series almost devotedly, and some of the earlier adventures I really truly love; I even consider the first book one of my all-time favorites. But right before the release of this installment in 2015 I fell off the Russell & Holmes train for awhile and got behind by 5 books. So when started this one in order to catch up, I was SHOCKED at how much I immediately disliked:
-the chemistry between Russell and Holmes is nonexistent in this installment. Their interactions are sanitized and just downright boring, with none of the spark that I vividly remember (and can point to exact passages) from the earlier books.
-the STAGGERING amount and abuse of phonetic spelling used by King to convey accents, particularly Japanese ones. King draws out scenes and emphasizes over and over just how difficult it is for various Japanese characters to pronounce English words, especially the English letter "r", and is just quite offensive at times. Russell is also deeply judgy about characters not being able to speak "properly".
-the reliance on Japanese stereotypes, such as comparing Japanese characters to dolls and children because of how "tiny" they are; the broad, sweeping statements about Japanese people being super industrious; the repetitive scenes of Russell turning her nose up at Japanese foods that are, to her, basically all just stinky dried fish. And there aren't things that just happen a bit and then Russell learns from them and corrects her thinking - even up until the very end of the book these problems persist.
-the mystery is little more than a brainteaser wrapped in a history lesson that King has tried to make multilayered but is really just quite messy. I genuinely didn't believe for a moment this was a case Holmes (any version of him) would get involved in, let alone not be able to see the very obvious answers to.
I don't remember any of the previous books having the same issues to this extent, but I'm also not sure how much of it was maybe a younger me not picking up on things? I'm going to continue my catch-up of the series for now (partially to find out if "Dreaming Spies" is just a weak link) but I'm really disappointed in King for both the overall mystery as well as astounding amount of stereotypes and snobbery she's written into this book.
-the chemistry between Russell and Holmes is nonexistent in this installment. Their interactions are sanitized and just downright boring, with none of the spark that I vividly remember (and can point to exact passages) from the earlier books.
-the STAGGERING amount and abuse of phonetic spelling used by King to convey accents, particularly Japanese ones. King draws out scenes and emphasizes over and over just how difficult it is for various Japanese characters to pronounce English words, especially the English letter "r", and is just quite offensive at times. Russell is also deeply judgy about characters not being able to speak "properly".
-the reliance on Japanese stereotypes, such as comparing Japanese characters to dolls and children because of how "tiny" they are; the broad, sweeping statements about Japanese people being super industrious; the repetitive scenes of Russell turning her nose up at Japanese foods that are, to her, basically all just stinky dried fish. And there aren't things that just happen a bit and then Russell learns from them and corrects her thinking - even up until the very end of the book these problems persist.
-the mystery is little more than a brainteaser wrapped in a history lesson that King has tried to make multilayered but is really just quite messy. I genuinely didn't believe for a moment this was a case Holmes (any version of him) would get involved in, let alone not be able to see the very obvious answers to.
I don't remember any of the previous books having the same issues to this extent, but I'm also not sure how much of it was maybe a younger me not picking up on things? I'm going to continue my catch-up of the series for now (partially to find out if "Dreaming Spies" is just a weak link) but I'm really disappointed in King for both the overall mystery as well as astounding amount of stereotypes and snobbery she's written into this book.