
empressbrooke
Written on Dec 11, 2016
Up until the final stretch, I was planning on giving this one 3 stars. Pendergast and Constance acted a little out of their established character at times, the mystery wasn't the most gripping, and it wasn't going to be remembered as the best entry in the series, but it was entertaining enough.
However, it's like the authors got to the end of the main mystery, realized that it wasn't long enough, and decided to throw in a bonkers ending that had nothing to do with the rest of the book, and the final revelations about this disjointed ending are info-dumped in this pile of verbal diarrhea that I'm pretty sure got tacked on after the editor had finished with their job. I suspect we're all supposed to be on tenterhooks because of the return of a character from earlier in the series, which is even more disjointedly shoehorned into this ridiculous final quarter of the book, but I was too busy rolling my eyes for it to have an effect on me.
However, it's like the authors got to the end of the main mystery, realized that it wasn't long enough, and decided to throw in a bonkers ending that had nothing to do with the rest of the book, and the final revelations about this disjointed ending are info-dumped in this pile of verbal diarrhea that I'm pretty sure got tacked on after the editor had finished with their job. I suspect we're all supposed to be on tenterhooks because of the return of a character from earlier in the series, which is even more disjointedly shoehorned into this ridiculous final quarter of the book, but I was too busy rolling my eyes for it to have an effect on me.