not enough havers!!!! deborah annoys me!!! but still excellent writing as always with elizabeth george. again like in the previous lynleys i felt like some britishisms were used wrong or aren’t used at all which always rips me out of the book and reminds me that george is american i gotta be honest!
i am a bit disappointed - this feels like the first or second draft of a book that could be amazing… it just feels like the author sometimes gets impatient with a certain setting or something that happens and skips over it such as not describing the battle that wendell fought with the horsemen or the time emily spent in fairie and thus it just felt rushed and thin. i love wendell and so i wanted more of him although i do LOVE the trope of the nonchalant character becoming deathly ill but my main gripe is indeed the lack of patience that the author seemed to have for this story. i get it, sometimes i won’t want to write a certain part of something because it’s tedious in the moment, but you still can come back to it and find the fun in writing it!!! and even if you don’t find that fun, it‘s still necessary!!!
so many missed chances - the footnotes could have been utilised much more and for comedic effect (some off hand comments that are just italicised could have been added as footnotes for example)
but all in all i did enjoy the first part of this book so much (i can pinpoint exactly when i stopped enjoying it as much , it was page 167) especially since it’s set in austria and i‘m half-austrian, i shall give it 3 ⭐️!