Glass Town

by Steven Savile

Steven Savile has been an international sensation, selling over half a million copies of his novels worldwide and writing for cult favourite television shows including Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Stargate. Now, he is finally making his US debut with Glass Town, a brilliantly composed novel revolving around the magic and mystery lurking in London. In 1926, two brothers both loved Eleanor Raines, a promising young actress from the East End of London. But, along with Seth Lockwood, she disappeared, never to be seen again. Isaiah, Seth's younger brother, refused to accept that she was just gone. It has been seventy years since and the brothers are long dead. But now their dark, twisted secret threatens to tear the city apart. Seth made a bargain with Damiola, an illusionist, to make a life size version of his most famous trick and hide away part of London to act as a prison out of sync with our time, where one year passes as one hundred. That illusion is Glass Town. And now its walls are failing. Reminiscent of Clive Barker's Weaveworld and Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Savile brings out the magic in the everyday. Glass Town is full of gritty urban landscapes, realistic characters, conflict, secrets, betrayals, magic, and mystery.

• ISBN13: 9781250077837
• Publish Date: 5 December 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 October 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Glass Town was better than I thought it was going to be, but in a lot of ways, it still felt scattered and messy to me. I guess, ultimately, this wasn't the book I signed up for?

Josh Raines inherits a mystery from his grandfather - a mystery about a young woman beloved by his great-grandfather and his great-great-uncle.  Eleanor Raines disappeared off the set of Hitchcock's unfinished Number 13 and was never seen again.  So what happened to Eleanor?  Something is rotten in the Rothery, and Joshua can't help but to be swept up in it all.

It was Eleanor Raines and the Glass Town I wanted out of this book. There was very little time spent with these two, although they were a constant part of conversation. With so many different POVs, it's easy to see why nobody really had a fleshed out story. Multiple POVs are fantastic when they're used to accentuate the story, but this is a relatively short book and there were some that didn't seem to add to the promised plot. The two cops, Taff and Julie, were caught up on the side but didn't do anything to really add to the world building or to Josh's search. I could have done without them.

As an adult mystery novel, Glass Town does just fine. But don't come in expecting a lot of fantasy. There's speculation and a tease, but not full immersion. I mean, come on! Projections of old movies that come to life? A movie set removed from time and used as a prison? There were so many promises of things that interested me on the other side of the mirror that, once it became clear I wasn't going to get them, I lost interest in what was left.

[Quirky Cat]

3 1/2 Stars

Glass Town is a standalone novel written by Steven Savile (you may recognize the name from the credits of Doctor Who, Torchwood, or Stargate). It’s about a young man who inherits a mystery from his father, who inherited it from his own father. The mystery? Eleanor Raines’ disappearance. The elder Raines’ (yes, you read the name correctly) never got over her going missing, and he passed the obsession down through the generations. Now it is Josh’s turn to try and figure out the puzzle left for him.



Glass Town is absolutely full to the brim of good ideas; the application is where I found it to be lacking. I love the concept of Glass Town, how it got to be there, the mystery that got handed down for generations, all of that is brilliant. Despite these wonderful moments though, Glass Town is a relatively slow paced read, sometimes going on for chapters before another revelation or break in the plot occurs.
I loved the characters introduced here, with few exceptions. The obsession the Raines men have for Eleanor Raines is fascinating. First we have Isaiah, whom stared it all. He was so obsessed with this woman, that when it became clear she was never coming back, he married her sister and took her name (how messed up is that?). He never stopped looking for Eleanor, and bid Boone to do the same. So upon Isaiah’s (early) death, Boone picked up the hunt, adding new pieces of information to the puzzle, which he then passed off to Josh upon his death. The cycle they have is really quite fascinating, and I imagine had Seth Lockwood (our antagonist, more on him later) not acted rashly, it likely would have continued on in this manner for countless more generations. At least in theory.
Seth is a pretty impulsive antagonist, all things considered. He doesn’t take the time to think things out, to see the ultimate repercussions to his actions. For example, had he left Josh alone there’s a chance that he may have let the whole mystery drop. But by going after him he forced Josh into action, thus putting everything he was hoping to gain at risk. Pretty silly, when you think about it. Still, he’s a classic mobster type, where he lets his emotions rule over everything. He makes for a pretty good foil, when you think about it (after all, can’t we argue that all of the Raines men were likewise fueled by their emotions? What else is obsession?).
There is one character that I feel was sorely underdeveloped, Eleanor Raines. I know, how ironic? To all the men in this novel she’s seen as nothing more than an object, so she’s simply represented as just that. If it weren’t for the fact that she was one of the only females in this novel, I might not have picked up on it so quickly. But she’s one of four (and that’s if you count a non-human succubus creature as a woman). It’s ironic, she’s the whole reason for this plot, but I feel like I barely know her (other than to know that she’s so beautiful men can’t stop thinking about her).
My final complaint is one I’m going to have to dance around, as I don’t want it to be too big of a spoiler. I feel like the promise for this novel was broken. From the start, everything in this novel had been about Eleanor Raines, Seth Lockwood, and Glass Town. Certain expectations/promises are made because of this, and I feel like they just were not met by the end. It was disappointing for me, to say the least.
I still can’t get over some of the core concepts for this novel; they’re so intriguing and different from what I’ve read and seen before. If the direction had gone slightly any other way, I think I would have enjoyed this novel a lot more than I did.


.For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks