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A review by topdragon
The Great Game by Lavie Tidhar
4.0
The third novel in the “Bookman Histories” trilogy is not content to merely wrap things up and provide explanations for everything that has come before. It does bring the major intertwined story plots to a close but leaves plenty of things for readers to think about.
This third book begins as a spy novel in many respects. Upon the murder of Mycroft Holmes, a retired shadow executive agent known as Smith is put on the case. But, just as with the first two books, what begins as a fairly straight forward plot soon devolves into myriads of interrelated subplots and boatloads of characters we’ve all run across before.
As mashups go, this trilogy has to compete for the “most characters” prize. Imagine an alternate earth steampunk world where British royalty is a race of alien lizards. Imagine populating it with characters including Harry Houdini, Mycroft Holmes (and his famous detective brother, the Beekeeper), Bram Stoker, Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, Irene Adler, Miss Havisham, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Nicola Tesla, Charles Babbage, Viktor Frankenstein, Jekyll, Moreau, and the entire cast of celebrities from the Chicago World’s Fair, etc etc. And then imagine a complex plot filled with murderous intrigue, spy games, sleuthing action, and supernatural mysteries and you begin to get an idea of what you’re in for.
And of course, we have the mysterious entity known as The Bookman.
Overall, these books were interesting reads but mostly for the game of trying to recognize all of the characters thrown at you from literature or history. Some are obvious from the moment they are introduced but some are a bit more obscure and requires a broad knowledge of the Penny Dreadful time period.
This third book begins as a spy novel in many respects. Upon the murder of Mycroft Holmes, a retired shadow executive agent known as Smith is put on the case. But, just as with the first two books, what begins as a fairly straight forward plot soon devolves into myriads of interrelated subplots and boatloads of characters we’ve all run across before.
As mashups go, this trilogy has to compete for the “most characters” prize. Imagine an alternate earth steampunk world where British royalty is a race of alien lizards. Imagine populating it with characters including Harry Houdini, Mycroft Holmes (and his famous detective brother, the Beekeeper), Bram Stoker, Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, Irene Adler, Miss Havisham, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Nicola Tesla, Charles Babbage, Viktor Frankenstein, Jekyll, Moreau, and the entire cast of celebrities from the Chicago World’s Fair, etc etc. And then imagine a complex plot filled with murderous intrigue, spy games, sleuthing action, and supernatural mysteries and you begin to get an idea of what you’re in for.
And of course, we have the mysterious entity known as The Bookman.
Overall, these books were interesting reads but mostly for the game of trying to recognize all of the characters thrown at you from literature or history. Some are obvious from the moment they are introduced but some are a bit more obscure and requires a broad knowledge of the Penny Dreadful time period.