A review by sophiahelix
Fish, Blood, And Bone by Leslie Forbes

3.0

I started this years ago and got bogged down, and while I made it through this time I had the same problems. The book starts off strong and incorporates a number of fascinating elements (Jack the Ripper, lost waterfalls in Tibet, illicit romance in British Calcutta, a fabled poppy with curative powers) and has some great characters, but the author goes way overboard with scientific and historical detail, and it's hard to keep everything straight. It doesn't help that she switches up POVs and timelines somewhat indiscriminately, and that in the third section of the book the characterization and plot suddenly twist 90 degrees, but there's a lot of promise here. Because it's a suspense/mystery novel, I skimmed the last 100 pages or so to find out what happened, and the resolution of the last couple of chapters was fairly satisfying (there are some loose ends, but that suits the style of the narrative). It's just too bad that the novel as a whole doesn't live up to the promise of the beginning.