Title: The angel of the crows.
Author: Katherine Addison.
Format: E-ARC (Thanks to Netgalley, all opinions are my own!)
Publisher: Tor Books.
Page count: 407.
Release day: June 23rd 2020.
Genre: Adult, fantasy.
Rating: DNF @20%.
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
This is not the story you think it is. These are not the characters you think they are. This is not the book you are expecting.
In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings under a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent.
Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.
My thoughts:
Well that third sentence of the summary is definitely true, ‘This is not the book you are expecting’. This was so much more of a mystery/detective story then I thought!
In the first 20% of this book we only meet one Angel, and there is no mention of any werewolves or vampires. So I can’t imagine them being such a big part of the book..!
This book was just really not for me! I was not connecting with the writing nor the characters or the plot. The main character, Mr Doyle, felt very flat to me. He wasn’t interesting at all in those first 20%. I think we were supposed to be curious about The angel of the crows, and what he was and what is role was. But I just wasn’t.
I’m still kinda curious what Jack the Ripper’s role is in this book, I have some guesses, but it wasn’t enough to pull me through the book!
I think this can be a good book for some readers, especially if you like the combination of fantasy and mystery, it was just not for me!
I honestly thought this was a purely supernatural novel of some kind when I first read the blurb, so I was kind of thrown to see that it’s a Sherlock retelling. I’m still interested in it to be fair but I can see why discovering that it’s mostly focused on mystery after that blurb would be disheartening. I hope you have a much better experience with your next read.
Yeah I was kinda caught off guard there haha!
Sorry this one didn’t work for you, Evelyn! Hope your next read is more enjoyable. 😀
Thanks!
I was excited to read this book… but yours is the 3rd review I’ve read where the reader was either really disappointed or not interested enough to finish. What a letdown!
It sounded really good! But I really couldn’t get into it!
Yeah, I can see why a lot of people struggled with this one. I enjoyed it, and found nothing really all that bad about it…but it still felt like it was missing something. I think I just wanted more.
I think it also didn’t help that I’m not that into Sherlock Holmes?!
Glad you did enjoy it though!