The Moor, O Jerusalem, Justice Hall, The Game, Locked Rooms

[lightreads]

Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Books 4-8 of that series where young woman meets, studies with, and eventually marries Sherlock Holmes. I'm . . . ambivalent.



Good things" Pretty writing. Good research. Not infrequent veins of emotional or intellectual or historical richness. Commercial derivative fiction that's actually interesting!



The bad: not always succeeding in that admittedly hard task of writing about historical people and their views on race and gender while neither alienating modern readers or being anachronistic. (These books fail in both directions, on different occasions).



But the greatest sin of all is that, right up to Locked Rooms, Sherlock freaking Holmes was about as dull and sanitized as he could get. I mean, she started by virtually hand waving the drug addiction, but apparently all his quirkiness and baggage went, too. I mean, Sherlock Holmes! You have to try to make him uninteresting. That does get better in the last book




View all my reviews.

Comments

[readerjane]

How strange what different reactions we can have.

I actually found Holmes less interesting in the last book -- I thought it a bit of a disappointment.

Which isn't to say I wouldn't like King to deal with Holmes addiction. She brushed on it briefly in the story where he helps a young veteran addict, and a bit in the one where Russell became addicted. But yes, I'd like to see more of that.

On the whole, though, I enjoyed seeing Holmes through his own eyes less than I did seeing him through Russell's eyes. Her inner tone of mixed admiration and exasperation draws a better picture, IMO.

Have you read King's Folly? I think you'd enjoy that.