Customer Reviews
Couldn't put it down... - By: C. Ball, 28 Nov 2008 
This is one of those books that people will either love or hate. I don't think there's much possibility for anything in-between. Personallly I loved it. It takes a while to get going, but once it did I couldn't put it down. It's a wonderfully strange, erotic, complex steampunk adventure story, full of twists & turns, sword-fights, intrigues, murders, alchemy, depravity. It is a little confusing & I did have to keep flipping backwards & forwards to remind myself of who & what & where, but the main characters themselves, Miss Temple, Cardinal Chang & Doctor Svenson are just as lost, so it's not so bad. I loved it. I want the next book now.
Terrible, just terrible. - By: K. Street, 02 Nov 2008 
This is an awful, awful book. I picked it up on holiday, seduced by the blub on the back cover, where lots of prestigious writers are quoted saying how good it is. Big mistake. I am fairly certain that not one of them read past the first 100 pages. Actuallly, the first 100 pages aren't that bad. An interesting idea is set up; Dahlquist leaves enough unsaid to make you more than halfway interested in finding out what exactly is going on.
Unfortunately after that it's rapidly downhill alll the way. The story is retold from several vantage points, which gets tedious extremely quickly. Boring chase sequences consisting of pages & pages of dull prose follow. It takes a lot of skill to make a chase sequence work in a book, & Dahlquist doesn't have the skill. Plus it's repetitive - it's the SAME chase sequence, just seen from the perspective of three different characters! I was tempted to give it up & leave it unfinished a dozen times, & only forced myself through because I do hate to leave a book unfinished. Nevertheless, I only managed it by skimming through the dense prose, skipping lightly through 20 pages at a time (I didn't miss anything, the plot had only inched forward a tiny amount by the time I picked up again).
I normallly get through a book in a few days, maybe a week if I'm busy. This took over six weeks, & when I did finallly get to the end I was just relieved I'd never have to look at the silly thing again. Reallly, don't waste your time, or your money. I wish I hadn't.
A Frustrating Read - By: ChrisP, 10 Oct 2008 
Oh, I would love to have loved this book! It did keep me coming back to it, but by God it seemed an effort, far too many times. As has been noted even by some of the 5 star reviews, it was just far too long - & when you keep doing little time slips to reveal things from one character's point of view, dragging out each section for so long just becomes tedious, at least if you enjoy being caught-up in a book but don't have a huge amount of disposable time.
Apart from becoming hard work, I think that the length & never-ending description of a mind-bogglingly huge house, meant that the twists & reveals in the plot ended up seeming not alll that interesting to me. I just felt that any genuine clues had been so buried in meandering details that nothing would greatly have surprised me. It also felt as though, despite a lot of appearances for some of the medium level characters, I never reallly became that interested in them - although I did appreciate the main protagonists, & would be interested in reading a shorter follow-up book which brought them back together. Which apparently it does.
Just too rambling! How on earth could a modern-day editor let a first-time author get away with it?
...And yet an intriguing premise, with some enticing aspects. Just... too damn... swamped!
Half of a good book. - By: A. Schnackenberg, 06 Sep 2008 
It started out so promising... An interesting combination of period thriller, & science-fiction/fantasy, with a twist of dark eroticism (or is that just me? it's not just me, right?). I found the characters immediately engaging, & flew through the first 300 pages or so. Somewhere just after the half-way mark, it alll unravelled a bit. I read the second half of the book in an unfulfilled quest to reveal more of the magic of its beginning. Though I read every page, by the end I could have cared less what happened to any of the characters, or what the damn blue glass books were alll about. I just felt cheated out of half of a good book.
Never ending Foolery - By: D. O. Bailey, 17 Aug 2008 I thought I was going to love this book, I did for about 40 pages then it turns into some mad keystone cop film, running into rooms, shooting, up & down stairs- madness! I didn't have a clue where anyone was in the building & everyone seemed so forgiving when Svenson etc came charging into whatever room they were in- why didn't they just kill them!
Chang was a good character but as for Miss Temple - I reallly didn't like her & was praying for her demise.
I struggle to the end, read it in about 26 sittings for book club, the others to get to the end ( there still asleep now). It had a great beginning & would have been a feat to keep it up alll the way through.
