Just a bit dull....

So this is one of those books where they could have just skipped all the bit in the middle, something important happens early on, then you know, lots of repetitive stuff around Shakespeare, then a major character decides to do change plans to do something that they already pretty much tried in book 1.

The performance was good, just the material went on and on all the time.

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Tricky second book in, possibly, a great series

Second in the “DODO” series, and whilst this is a solid 4 star read, it suffer from the classic “difficult second album” issues that prevent it from being excellent.

The expository dump required to update the reader on the events depicted in the first book of the series seemed to drag on far longer than required, largely due to the fragmentary nature of the writing (through collated “found” documents): it seemed as if I were still getting info dumps halfway through. Having recently re-read the first book, however, it is possible that I am being unduly harsh on the exposition as the story was already fresh in my mind.

Whilst the new characters introduced were interesting, I felt disappointed at the lack of time given to one of the POV characters from the first book. Whilst this absence provided a focal point to drive the story forward, it had the effect of leaving much of the book without some of the sparky, humorous, character interaction that elevated the previous book in the series.

In comparison to its predecessor in the DODO series, this book appeared to spend much more time fleshing out the minutiae of the adventures in the historical settings, at the cost of developing the ongoing plot points in the “present”. It was as if there was a much more exciting story going on, but that a lot of groundwork needed to be put in place first before we would be allowed to see it.

The ending of the first book in the series felt complete, whilst also leaving the door wide open for a sequel. In contrast, this story ends surprisingly abruptly with so many open plot threads that I almost felt like the author got edited down into a compact word count leaving a half finished volume 3 sitting on her desk and a treatment for an 8 book series with a single overarching story.

Hopefully that is the case and a third instalment can be published quickly (I would happily pre-order today).

I listened to the Audible version, narrated by Laurence Bouvard et al. Narration was excellent.

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