Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by xeni
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
2.0
Wow, it took me a year to finish this book. Why? (mild spoilers ahead)
Well, at first it felt really fresh, really new, really fun, and then it slowly dribbled out into this tedious, messy chore that I felt I needed to slog through, just to get it off my currently-reading shelf. Normally I would just ditch this kind of book to my 'unfinished' pile. But there was something that was still so charming about it.
I love the premise: alternate history due to time travel paradox, where science accelerates a bit too fast during the very fun Victorian era, to give a beautiful steampunk setting. But that's about all I really enjoyed.
I very much disliked the characters. Burton (main character) was the only one I felt somewhat sympathic towards, and that only because we actually saw his reasoning first-hand. I felt mostly apathy towards any of the main villains, including Spring-Heeled Jack himself. In fact, I think I ended up loathing Jack, but not for being a flawed character, but because the author wrote him so badly. Yes, perhaps you do need a sort of filter to protect your mind, if you're going to time travel. That's something worth exploring. On the other hand, traveling to another culture on our planet (change in place, not time) can give a similar shock to less-robust minds, and somehow most do not end up having a complete mental break down. To me, it just felt like an easy way out, an easy way to explain Jack's brain fragmentation.
I can suspend my disbelief to go with the alternate history. I can even somehow concieve a land where our great historical figures (Darwin, Nightingale, etc.) have turned evil, and let their love of science completely trounce ethics. But there were too many things piled ontop of each other in this book, and it turned from a fun premise into a miserable, rigerous slog.
So, I finished the book, mostly because I was exhausted and needed something to read to stay awake, and it was one of the few on my phone I was already somewhat familiar with. I think I'm done with the steampunk genre for now, unfortunately. It's one of my favorite, but authors keep butchering it, instead of letting it flourish (for instance, China Mieville lets it flourish and build beautiful creations).
Well, at first it felt really fresh, really new, really fun, and then it slowly dribbled out into this tedious, messy chore that I felt I needed to slog through, just to get it off my currently-reading shelf. Normally I would just ditch this kind of book to my 'unfinished' pile. But there was something that was still so charming about it.
I love the premise: alternate history due to time travel paradox, where science accelerates a bit too fast during the very fun Victorian era, to give a beautiful steampunk setting. But that's about all I really enjoyed.
I very much disliked the characters. Burton (main character) was the only one I felt somewhat sympathic towards, and that only because we actually saw his reasoning first-hand. I felt mostly apathy towards any of the main villains, including Spring-Heeled Jack himself. In fact, I think I ended up loathing Jack, but not for being a flawed character, but because the author wrote him so badly. Yes, perhaps you do need a sort of filter to protect your mind, if you're going to time travel. That's something worth exploring. On the other hand, traveling to another culture on our planet (change in place, not time) can give a similar shock to less-robust minds, and somehow most do not end up having a complete mental break down. To me, it just felt like an easy way out, an easy way to explain Jack's brain fragmentation.
I can suspend my disbelief to go with the alternate history. I can even somehow concieve a land where our great historical figures (Darwin, Nightingale, etc.) have turned evil, and let their love of science completely trounce ethics. But there were too many things piled ontop of each other in this book, and it turned from a fun premise into a miserable, rigerous slog.
So, I finished the book, mostly because I was exhausted and needed something to read to stay awake, and it was one of the few on my phone I was already somewhat familiar with. I think I'm done with the steampunk genre for now, unfortunately. It's one of my favorite, but authors keep butchering it, instead of letting it flourish (for instance, China Mieville lets it flourish and build beautiful creations).