Review: A lot of ideas, loosely assembled
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 7, 2013
Take a Sherlock Holmes riff (the clever and preternaturally observant investigator with a brother in government, the military-veteran doctor), stir in Dr Who. The premise is chock full of steampunk-tech and cultural ideas, in a narrative struggling to explain the hows of the world's inner workings and the whys of forced character bonding, unfortunately with about the same lack of grace as some of the less structurally sound Dr Who episodes (lots of lingo, lectures that don't quite explain what's happening, then run around shooting monsters--and I say this as someone with a lifelong love of Dr Who). Perhaps the problems come from trying to set up too much in too short a story--I never believed the characters were anything more than coat-hangers for a rushed plot, and was never engaged enough with the heroes just to go along with the action with them. This first, short installment in the Agamemnon Frost series features a great protagonist name but was not enough to make me read on in the series.