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ineffablebob 's review for:
The Book of Air and Shadows
by Michael Gruber
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Michael Gruber's The Book of Air and Shadows is an odd combination of literary treasure hunt, personal memoir, and mystery-thriller. Two men in New York get caught up in the discovery of an old manuscript that may hold details of a lost Shakespeare artifact. Such a thing being extremely valuable, shadowy enemies are after it and anyone who is in on the discovery. A lot of the writing rambles all over the place, going off on tangents about personal history, friends and family, sexual conquests (or lack thereof), etc so that we end up learning all about the men's lives while they're dealing with this discovery. We also get the manuscript itself in chunks at the end of each chapter, written in ye olde English so it takes some extra effort to decipher. The first half of the book is very slow, much more rambling than action, but it picks up in the second half with gangsters, fights, gun battles, travel to historical sites in England, various people not what they seemed...everything you'd expect from a story with this premise.
In my opinion, this book needed a lot more editing. I found myself skimming a lot of the rambling about Jake's philandering and Albert's angst over romantic and professional failings. There's a decent plot in there, built around the story contained in the manuscript and the world of historians who study such things, but you have to wade through a whole lot of frankly uninteresting detail of personal failings to find it. I'm not unhappy that I read it, but I'd not pick up another one by Gruber unless I was assured of a more focused narrative.
In my opinion, this book needed a lot more editing. I found myself skimming a lot of the rambling about Jake's philandering and Albert's angst over romantic and professional failings. There's a decent plot in there, built around the story contained in the manuscript and the world of historians who study such things, but you have to wade through a whole lot of frankly uninteresting detail of personal failings to find it. I'm not unhappy that I read it, but I'd not pick up another one by Gruber unless I was assured of a more focused narrative.