Reviews with content warning for Addiction - The Sign of Four

Ok, wow, mixed bag on this one. On one hand, the mystery its self is very fun; locked room, treasure, a mysterious calling card, its all cool. On the other hand, good God is this one racist. Most of the ACD Sherlock stories I've read keep that good ole' English racism to a minimum, but The Sign of Four seems to have dialed it up to ten to make up for that. I don't think you can go two pages here without reading multiple paragraphs of Watson or some other character just using the rudest, most vile descriptions possible for Indian people. I can't say I didn't expect it, because I know just how horribly the English viewed Indian people at the time, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to read. I'm not kidding, though, the racism in this one is really really bad, especially because we don't get the usual Holmes thing of having the story at least somewhat go 'um, actually, the people society hates are actually just people and it is in fact the rich bastards who suck'. Just yikes.

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nathanjhunt's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.5

My 9th book finished in 2022.

This book hasn't aged well. This is my very first dive into a Sherlock Holmes novel, and I must admit, I wasn't expecting so much racism from it.

It's a snapshot into the British colonial minds and attitudes of the late 1800s. Imperialism was reaching its peak, and that forms the backbone of the plot. The whole basis of the treasure was that it was stolen in the first place. I can't sympathise with any of the characters because they're hunting for colonial gains. It really does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

The casualness of drug use at the beginning of the novel was baffling! They call this era 'The Great Binge' for a reason! If anything, this is an interesting case study into middle-class society of the time.

Casting the plot aside, I did enjoy seeing how Holmes' mind works, and having it from Watson's POV worked very well. There was a lot of monologue and explaining along the way. Every character seems to speak in the same manner and the same words. I feel like Conan Doyle was very comfortable writing as a middle-class man, but had no idea how to write characters from poorer and different backgrounds, and it's full of stereotypes. The cast, I suppose, is diverse, but it's written badly.

I left feeling unsatisfied by the story - why demonise one character, but act like the other was right with what they did? It just doesn't make any sense. And ultimately, Holmes did hardly anything in this novel, if was the characters around him mostly.

I enjoyed it somewhat, and am curious to read other Sherlock Holmes novels, but perhaps this wasn't the best one to start on.

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danny_fox's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Okay, so, I'm finally done with this book, took me a while.
My honest rating for this book would be around 4.5, again, maybe a bit more? Since I liked this book more than the previous one, and that one I also said it's 4.5.... 4.7 maybe?

Like for my previous review on A Study In Scarlet, I will mention 3 things I liked about this book and 3 I didn't. I will also be comparing it a lot to A Study In Scarlet.

What I liked:

- We got waaaaaaay more John and Sherlock content than in the previous one. I love their relationship, so seeing that the whole book focused on them (unlike the first one) that made me quite happy. The book had a bunch of great moments and wholesome scenes between the two.

- As I mentioned before, there were a lot more fun scenes and interesting quotes. I almost gave up on the first book, but with this one, I didn't have trouble finishing it.

- We learned more about Sherlock, which I found really cool. I feel like this book gave us some more information on him, we learned some of his flaws and opinions, which makes him feel more like a real person. Characters are the most important thing to me in the stories, so I was glad they got more development.

Bonus: The last few lines in the book were so intereeeeeesting. It felt cool, but sad, but interesting. The last line really made me feel like :O.

What I didn't like:

- The mystery was eh. I found the plot from the first book (aka A Study In Scarlet) to be more interesting. The whole mystery in this book just wasn't as interesting and felt a bit slow. I was also not the fan of the whole treasure thing. The mystery from the previous book just felt more intriguing to me, but that's just my opinion, as is this whole review. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- The villain was just... kinda disappointing?? Again, I am gonna compare this to the first book, and say that the "villain" from that one is way more interesting. The murderer felt more morally gray, and when I was done reading the book, I was sort of thinking to myself "okay, sure, he killed someone, but I don't really hate him for it?" I felt more sympathy towards him.
With this dude, I just felt nothing. So I found him to be more boring.

- Again, there were some lines and things characters would say that would now be seen as offensive. It's an old book, so it goes without saying that there will be some parts that felt iffy. I would suggest looking into this topic before reading the book.

Final thoughts:
Despite it all, I think A Sign Of Four is definitely an improvement from A Study In Scarlet. Even tho the plot was not really my thing, I still enjoyed the story a lot. Seeing Sherlock and John just solve the mystery together was super fun. Looking forward to the next story in the series. :D

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