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A review by cornerofmadness
A Fever of the Blood by Oscar de Muriel
3.0
I didn’t realize that this was book two and it probably would have had helped to figure out how this odd couple got together. The best way to describe Frey and McGray is an English and Scottish Scully and Mulder respectively set in Victorian Edinburgh. Frey is a wealthy Londoner who decided to go into policing and ended up sent to Scotland for reasons I’m not entirely sure (probably in book one) but being embarrassed by his fiancée running off with his brother was part of it. McGray known as Nine Nails because his insane sister slaughtered his family and cut off one of his fingers in the process, is a Scottish detective.
The things that grated on me was the anti-English sentiment (which yes was real then and fairly deservedly but this harped on and on about it) and McGray constantly making the equivalent of dandy/gay jokes about Frey all the time left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There was an uneven pacing to some of it as well.
But there was good too. A man has escaped from the same asylum McGray’s sister is in and in fact she spoke to him, the first words she had spoken since her incarceration there. Ardglass is the son of a wealthy aristocratic alcoholic nicknamed Lady Glass because of her drinking issues. Ardglass is supposedly dead which was less embarrassing than he’s insane but is he? Ardglass is on the loose killing everyone who helped to put him away.
However, are the witches helping him or out to kill him? McGray, Mulder-like, believes in supernatural things like magic and is convinced they are real witches (in fact that’s all their division does, hunt down supernatural crimes). Frey, our Scully clone, doesn’t believe in it at all and is horrified most of the time to be partnered with McGray. Both of them are sort of whining and nasty to each other so it was hard to like either of them.
Is it really magic or is that magic science? The book is written so you can take it either way. As a mystery it is interesting and holds your attention, but it could had been tightened up. Just cutting out some of the nasty barbed banter would have shortened this fifty pages at least. Will I read another? Probably but this one is iffy for me.
The things that grated on me was the anti-English sentiment (which yes was real then and fairly deservedly but this harped on and on about it) and McGray constantly making the equivalent of dandy/gay jokes about Frey all the time left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There was an uneven pacing to some of it as well.
But there was good too. A man has escaped from the same asylum McGray’s sister is in and in fact she spoke to him, the first words she had spoken since her incarceration there. Ardglass is the son of a wealthy aristocratic alcoholic nicknamed Lady Glass because of her drinking issues. Ardglass is supposedly dead which was less embarrassing than he’s insane but is he? Ardglass is on the loose killing everyone who helped to put him away.
However, are the witches helping him or out to kill him? McGray, Mulder-like, believes in supernatural things like magic and is convinced they are real witches (in fact that’s all their division does, hunt down supernatural crimes). Frey, our Scully clone, doesn’t believe in it at all and is horrified most of the time to be partnered with McGray. Both of them are sort of whining and nasty to each other so it was hard to like either of them.
Is it really magic or is that magic science? The book is written so you can take it either way. As a mystery it is interesting and holds your attention, but it could had been tightened up. Just cutting out some of the nasty barbed banter would have shortened this fifty pages at least. Will I read another? Probably but this one is iffy for me.