Review: Too many loose ends
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 1, 2014
It's been said that devil is in the details, but the problem I have with the latest installment of the Haberdashers series is there aren't many. Reading this book felt as if I've gotten an outline of the plot rather than the fully-fleshed out story. Very few events unfolded real time, having been replaced with firsthand accounts from the participants, and as a result, many opportunities for character development were lost in the process.That disappointed me because I would have liked to get to know Georgiana - she had a lot of potential as a heroine - but the secrets she kept from her friends were revealed late in the book and without adequate buildup. The hero didn't fare much better - his story was uncorroborated by any other characters - he was almost as much of an unknown at the end of the novel as he was when the heroine first met him in Vienna.It is possible, the timeline got in the way of the story: the first half of the novel happens before the first two books and the second half, when main characters from the previous books join the action, after. But if you didn't readAthena's Ordeal (The Haberdashers Book Two), chances are, you'll miss the gist of the conflict and the connection between the villains.I can't help but wonder if the plot took a back seat to the relationships among the Haberdashers, which, in all fairness, were done very well, in fact, much better than the heroine's family dynamics, the hero's history, or the conspiracy. But, even though I'm not thrilled with this latest installment, I'm cautiously optimistic about the next one. I'd like to see if the loose ends left dangling at the end of this book would get tied-up then. If not, there's always Charlie's story, which is, according to Ms. London, thematically similar toTrials of Artemis (The Haberdashers Book One), my favorite in the series so far.