It is rare to get a book that I couldn\u2019t finish, but unfortunately I couldn\u2019t get through this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently thought I\u2019d try to read some \u201clocked room\u201d mysteries, as I had read that it was its own developed subcategory of mystery novels. I picked two that seemed interesting, and this one was available at my library. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book appears to be written targeting teenage audiences, and the writing seems awkward and unnatural. There is a lot of information dumping here – instead of showing there is just page upon page of telling. In this main character\u2019s world everyone else is simply a side character, and she treats them that way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obviously the writer enjoys the genre and spends a lot of time focusing on nods to enthusiasts that eat this stuff up (think Star Trek fans but about magicians) and the settings of the book are going for a cozy vibe – but it seemed like too much setup and not much development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got through about half the book, and I ended up doing some mental algebra and it seemed like there wasn\u2019t going to be any payoff worth what I\u2019d have to put in to finish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, I\u2019m not giving up on the genre – just as I threw in the towel on this one, the other title on my list to try became available at the library, so I\u2019ll give it another chance. Hopefully the writing quality will be better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next book is called Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead. Let\u2019s hope it is worth finishing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is rare to get a book that I couldn\u2019t finish, but unfortunately I couldn\u2019t get through this one. I recently thought I\u2019d try to read some \u201clocked room\u201d mysteries, as I had read that it was its own developed subcategory of mystery novels. I picked two that seemed interesting, and this one was available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-TP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}