The Geographer's Library
Jul. 20th, 2009 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essentialsaltesThe Geographer's Library by John Fasman.
I enjoyed it. Not a great book, but a good book. The main story is that of a callow backwater journalist looking to write the obituary of a local professor. The suspicious lack of information he uncovers pushes him to dig deeper, until things start getting weird. Interleaved with this story are historical short-short-stories regarding the theft of unusual items of alchemical significance. Could it all be related? Will our journalist ever find out what's really going on? Yes and no.
Enjoyable, but it never quite gelled, and the climax is more of a pffft than a bang.
I enjoyed it. Not a great book, but a good book. The main story is that of a callow backwater journalist looking to write the obituary of a local professor. The suspicious lack of information he uncovers pushes him to dig deeper, until things start getting weird. Interleaved with this story are historical short-short-stories regarding the theft of unusual items of alchemical significance. Could it all be related? Will our journalist ever find out what's really going on? Yes and no.
Enjoyable, but it never quite gelled, and the climax is more of a pffft than a bang.
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Date: 2009-07-20 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 10:42 pm (UTC)I'm reading it now, after picking it up for .99.
I can't decide if it's good or not. I love the vignettes of the stolen items, but I cringe at some of his almost-beautiful-but-inevitably-cliched similes.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 11:12 pm (UTC)Agreed. You want to slap him and say, "Son, you have to be Raymond Chandler to make that work, and you're no Raymond Chandler."
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Date: 2009-08-13 11:15 pm (UTC)