It’s a little bit like putting whipped cream and parmesan cheese on a hamburger-individually, all good things, but none of them really feel quite right together, and you’re left with a funny expression on your face if you try to consume them all at once. The writing is lovely, and each component of the story, taken individually, has merit it’s just that, when mashed together, it feels a little disjointed. As things progress, however, we move from mystery to history to (nearly) unrequited romance, a somewhat jarring shift in focus. I loved the atmosphere of the story at the start-very Sherlockian, oozing with Victorianicity (which is now a word, as I have declared it to be so). Now, there’s not time travel going on here, per se, but one of our primary characters, the inscrutable Keita Mori, is clairvoyant, which amounts to the same thing, particularly in the sense that as he intimates to various characters (particularly our protagonist, Thaniel Steepleton) his knowledge concerning the course of future events and subtly suggests how they might change them, that, in turn, changes his knowledge and perception of what is to come, resulting in the need to shove a banana into your ear so it can get to your brain (because potassium helps with cramps, right?). Where I tend to start losing the thread and incur cramping of the cerebellum (which is only slightly less painful than a calf cramp in the middle of the night) is when time travel gets involved.
("It's a taste treat! It's a laxative! Stop-you're BOTH right!")
Is this historical fiction? Steampunk? Mystery? Alternate history? Romance? Yes, sort of, a little, kind of, and yeah, sure. Generally speaking, I’m fully on board with genre-defying/genre-bending works.
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