SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady
Just another GR refugee. Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.
Currently reading
Ashes of London
This, ladies and gentlemen, is an official DNF.
I don't make those very often; mostly I let a book marinate in my "currently reading" pile, because I might get back to it. I save DNF for a book that I know I will never "get back to."
Ashes of London is one of those. And I'm disappointed, because I was looking forward to this one. Mystery thriller set in the Great Fire of London and the aftermath! Just my type of thing.
Not so much. We start with the fire well under way - with the collapse of Old St Paul's Cathedral, the great medieval hulk, begun by William the Conqueror, that towered over the London of Charles II. But we don't get a dead body, or anything like a crime. (You would expect one by 15% in, which is about as far as I got.)
Aside from the fire, we don't really get a sense of 1666 at all. I read historical fiction to get a sense of the past. I didn't get that feel here. This could have been any pre-modern time with a big fire.
The writing is bland. We get no real sense of 1666. The characters are fairly flat. And we have two protagonists. (I dislike multiple protagonists, particularly uncharacterized multiple protagonists. Instead of giving us two flat narrators, how about giving us one interesting and developed one?)
So now I'm about 15% in, and nothing is really exciting me about this one. And then
(show spoiler), and I am out. I will never pick up this book again.
Because first I was bored, there was neither a sense of the past or a visible mystery to solve, and I didn't care about the characters (I can't even be bothered to remember their names), and then I was offended. And now I am gone.
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