52+ in 2009

[lumineaux]

Tears of Pearl by Tasha Alexander
I very much enjoyed the first two books in this series, about a Victorian aristocrat and amateur sleuth.  The third book was rather mediocre.  This book continues the trend in mediocrity.  Our heroine, Lady Emily, now married to her love interest, is on her honeymoon in Constantinople and ends up investigating the murder of a member of the Sultan's harem.  The author is completely unable to render the culture of Constantinople believably.  Maybe she did the research about that time and place, maybe she didn't.  But if she did do the research, she utterly failed to communicate it in her writing.  She really should have stuck to Victorian Europe.  The love interest has ceased to be interesting now that he's her husband.  The mystery was adequate but follows Roger Ebert's law of the conservation of characters: the culprit is always someone the audience has already met.

Having been so terribly disappointed in book #4, I went back and re-read book #1: Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander -- the book has some flaws (I understand that the heroine has fallen in love with the Iliad; stop talking about it now), but is still the highly enjoyable read that I remembered.  The heroine's learning to love her first husband only after his untimely death makes for pretty good storytelling, as does the unveiling of the mystery.  I hope that Alexander has a few more good stories like this one in her.

For those who might be interested in checking out these books, the second and third volumes are: A Poisoned Season and A Fatal Waltz.

Comments

[harpduchess.livejournal.com]

I've read the first two, but I haven't gotten around to the third yet. Maybe I'll read that one, but forget about #4. :)

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say skip it completely. But don't buy it in hardcover -- in fact, don't spend money to read it if you don't have to. It's still a reasonably decent way to kill time when you have time to kill. It would be good airplane reading, for example. I'll lend it to you if you want.

[rlg.livejournal.com]

sounds like it's becoming a "get it from the libary" series.