A review by bev_reads_mysteries
Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake

2.0

It may just be the mood I was in yesterday--I spent my morning in a meeting where I felt like the speaker was an adult in a Charlie Brown special. Nothing he said sounded like real language to me. And then last night when I was finishing up Nicholas Blake's Head of a Traveller, he just wasn't making sense to me.

Spoiler

I definitely wasn't buying the whole "everybody seems to be in a conspiracy to protect the Great Poet" thing nor "the Great Poet sacrifices himself at the end to protect his wife" (whom he doesn't even love) thing.

And I'm afraid that, much as I generally love Blake's writing and plotting, the whole story just came across as a convoluted mess. Much more convoluted than necessary for the purposes of mystifying the reader--I didn't feel mystified. I felt frustrated with everything from the opener (Nigel Strangeway's journal entry--in first person present while the rest of the novel is in past tense) to the bizarre characterizations (a gibbering dwarf? seriously?). This one was quite simply not up to Blake's usual par--at least not for me. Others have rated it quite highly, so your mileage may vary.

First posted as a mini-review on my blog My Reader's Block>My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.