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A review by unevendays
Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes by Kevin Cockle, Fred Saberhagen, Simon Clark, Stephen Volk, Charles Prepolec, Kim Newman, Tom English, Paul Kane, Christopher Fowler, Jeff Campbell, Lawrence C. Connolly, J.R. Campbell, Simon K. Unsworth, Tony Richards, William Meikle
4.0
As always in an anthology of stories, some appeal and some don't. The best story by far was Kim Newman's 'The Adventure of the Six Maledictions' - part of his Moriarty & Moran Victorian mash-up series - but unfortunately I'd already read it. Still, it's an excellent story (without it, I'd have given this 3 stars). I also enjoyed Christopher Fowler's effort - he has a good knack for Holmes stories. I also liked the story he wrote told from Mrs Hudson's point of view.
I enjoyed most of them, but at least two of the stories really, really irritated me by once again getting the drugs thing wrong. It's not complicated. Holmes uses cocaine and sometimes morphine when he hasn't got a case - when he's bored. He never uses it on a case. And he never takes opium. There's a whole sequence in (I think) The Man With the Twisted Lip where he assures a concerned Watson that he'd never touch the stuff because it clouds the mental faculties. Pedantic irritations aside, I enjoyed all the stories (apart from possibly the one with the magic knife that solves all of Holmes' cases for him...) a lot more than many Holmes pastiches I've read in the past. I was reading this concurrently with 'A Study in Sherlock' and it's this one I've kept reading and the other that has got left on a table to finish later.
I enjoyed most of them, but at least two of the stories really, really irritated me by once again getting the drugs thing wrong. It's not complicated. Holmes uses cocaine and sometimes morphine when he hasn't got a case - when he's bored. He never uses it on a case. And he never takes opium. There's a whole sequence in (I think) The Man With the Twisted Lip where he assures a concerned Watson that he'd never touch the stuff because it clouds the mental faculties. Pedantic irritations aside, I enjoyed all the stories (apart from possibly the one with the magic knife that solves all of Holmes' cases for him...) a lot more than many Holmes pastiches I've read in the past. I was reading this concurrently with 'A Study in Sherlock' and it's this one I've kept reading and the other that has got left on a table to finish later.