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talentedmisfit's review
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
bloodravenlib's review against another edition
4.0
This book was a pleasure to read, and it is one to browse through. Pick the passages that appeal to you first, then come back and read others. The book combines a feel of nonfiction, kind of like like reading an exotic guide or even something like the 10th edition Brittanica combined with a good fiction collection. There is also a subtle sense of humor along with a sense of wonder in the collection. Since I borrowed the copy I read, I did feel a bit rushed, but this is a book I would not mind buying so I can go back to it now and then. If you like Steampunk, Victoriana, or similar genres, you will enjoy this book. The photos and art in it are pretty good too.
sarah1984's review against another edition
5/6 - This book is wacky. And I mean WACKY with a capital W!! It's like a 'choose your own adventure' books crossed with a non-fiction full of footnotes. Every paragraph or so I'm flicking to the contents to find the page number for the correct section that further describes the occult item that was just mentioned in passing in the main body of the text.
If you go by the page numbers I'm only up to page 23, but if you go by the number of pages I've actually read it'd be more like 33. I've had to flick to the 'further reading' on all the items catalogued in the cabinet so many times that I reckon I'll have read 100 pages by the time I hit page 50. To be continued...
9/6 - I'm not sure I'm quite the right audience for this book. Half the time I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's real and what's not, who's real and who's imaginary and I'm pretty sure I'm missing hilarious 'in' jokes because, as I said I don't know what the hell's going on. To be continued...
14/6 - This just isn't my kind of book, for all the reasons I already gave plus the fact that other books are calling me 100 times more insistently than this was. I've returned it to the library and won't be attempting it again. This is more a book to be owned and read every so often, rather than all at once. It's more like a reference book than a novel, despite it's complete fictionality - you go to it to look up a specific subject/item, you don't read it in order cover to cover. There was nothing wrong with the writing or characters, it's just not my kind of book.
If you go by the page numbers I'm only up to page 23, but if you go by the number of pages I've actually read it'd be more like 33. I've had to flick to the 'further reading' on all the items catalogued in the cabinet so many times that I reckon I'll have read 100 pages by the time I hit page 50. To be continued...
9/6 - I'm not sure I'm quite the right audience for this book. Half the time I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's real and what's not, who's real and who's imaginary and I'm pretty sure I'm missing hilarious 'in' jokes because, as I said I don't know what the hell's going on. To be continued...
14/6 - This just isn't my kind of book, for all the reasons I already gave plus the fact that other books are calling me 100 times more insistently than this was. I've returned it to the library and won't be attempting it again. This is more a book to be owned and read every so often, rather than all at once. It's more like a reference book than a novel, despite it's complete fictionality - you go to it to look up a specific subject/item, you don't read it in order cover to cover. There was nothing wrong with the writing or characters, it's just not my kind of book.
wmhenrymorris's review
Lives up to the promise of the weird, spooky and arcane. Some nice play with forms of discourse, especially of the scholarly kind, but does have some minor lapses into archness.
thecommonswings's review
2.0
I’m being generous with those two stars. This really rubbed me up the wrong way with a panoply of writers and artists I otherwise really like and respect mistaking playful for self indulgence. It’s so slight and daft that the stories have no tension whatsoever. It’s all undercut by the general sense of a mutual admirers all dicking about and writing the slightest pieces imaginable and thinking it will do. Moorcock almost acquits himself, Moore falls to pieces utterly after a rather lovely initial idea and the whole book is just writer after writer, artist after artist doing the least possible effort and hoping it will do as a whole
I think what annoys me most is the book basically scuppers itself: if it didn’t try and embrace absurdism and horror at the same time it might even work, but by calling your book The Problematic Peregrinations of Professor Percival Q Throbmangler or whatever, you’re immediately limiting the possibility of anything truly horrifying or unexpected happening. This is why I dislike steampunk - with a bit of rigour and thought gone into it there’s a possibility of some extraordinary work to be made. Without that it’s just a bloke in a pith helmet with some cogs on it and a woman with a top hat with a dirigible coming out the back. Lazy, lazy, lazy
Two stars because I guess if you like this sort of thing you might like this. If, like me, you’re immediately doubting the Epicurean Entities of Canon Ephraim Bumtiddler-Mangrove is taking anything seriously then it’s really fucking annoying
I think what annoys me most is the book basically scuppers itself: if it didn’t try and embrace absurdism and horror at the same time it might even work, but by calling your book The Problematic Peregrinations of Professor Percival Q Throbmangler or whatever, you’re immediately limiting the possibility of anything truly horrifying or unexpected happening. This is why I dislike steampunk - with a bit of rigour and thought gone into it there’s a possibility of some extraordinary work to be made. Without that it’s just a bloke in a pith helmet with some cogs on it and a woman with a top hat with a dirigible coming out the back. Lazy, lazy, lazy
Two stars because I guess if you like this sort of thing you might like this. If, like me, you’re immediately doubting the Epicurean Entities of Canon Ephraim Bumtiddler-Mangrove is taking anything seriously then it’s really fucking annoying
clairemcnerney's review
3.0
On one hand this has more big name contemporary genre writers than half priced books, on the other hand some of these stories feel like bad school readings.