A Google user
4 stars, same as I rated the first book - noting this one skirts a precipitous drop to the realm of 3 stars... or even lower. As with TSCotAD (whew, these titles), 'European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman' has a quirky charm about it. Taking place at the turn of the century - that is 19th and 20th centuries - we are given copious amounts of proper form, proper dress and how one ever dealt in those days with the savages from (insert a random country here). The proper behaviour of ladies, gentlemen, footmen, street urchins and more are delved upon at a level I would call 'ad nauseum'. Still, the pacing of this story is more even than the first book - which by the author's own admission was converted from not only a short story but as well her own thesis. However, I would be amiss if I did not warn you that it is quite tedious in parts. I think one thing that struck me about this book was that it was extremely 'put-downable'. What I mean is that there are some novels we read where we sacrifice sleep, healthy eating habits and goodness knows what else to find out what comes next. This book was not like that. Again, the plot suffers from plodding über-details all while we're slowly but surely getting to the scenes of action, which are then only delivered as brief and totally unsurprising bursts of tepid and even lazy exertions. Sure we are treated to just about any monster that we could possibly want to find in our catalogue - though at the moment I don't believe we have touched on werewolves at all - but they don't really serve much purpose once we have the usual gaggle of same. For my tastes, I found there was no panache in their introductions, no surprises that would make us think 'ah, a different approach to the genre', no real oomph at all. Even Count Dracula's presence comes across as would a recurring character from Downton Abbey and then really only to occasionally spice up an otherwise mundane tea time. Having said that, the most frustrating change to me from book 1 to book 2 is that our very heroine - the so-far-not-empowered Mary Jekyll - does not seem to grow nor strengthen her form at all and instead becomes a much more tedious cliché of 'the weaker sex' in many cases (oh how she misses proper and respectable London!). Let's hope that if she does gain some abilities in book 3 - yes, we are introduced to the pre-plot of the third tome by the end - that part of that will be to grow a bit more of a stiff spine and learn to not whine quite so much. Yes, she can be studious and serious but that doesn't mean she has to continually pine and express self-doubt during every aside or inner thought. OK, I'm going to stop here because I'm actually talking myself down in terms of my reaction and rating. It's not a bad book per se, but I must admit I'm frustrated because I had MUCH higher aspirations.
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