“Ok, I have to say that as a novelist, Rutherford is about as talented as a bad fantasy pulp writer. Having said that, I thouroughly enjoyed reading this book, which in Rutherford's defence is an extremely ambitious undertaking. London is not a story about people but a story about a place and is meant to give a broad historical overview of how the city came to be using a series of fictional characters in the same heriditary line in order to tell that story. I found the characters flat, unimaginative, and just poorly written. The plot lines were very much in the same vein as a pop thriller or romance novel, punctuated with scenes of violence and prurient interest designed to keep the readers interest from waning from the real topic at hand, the city. Anyone fascinated with history, but who has a difficult time absorbing more traditional dry, date ridden texts that focus mainly on kings and military campaigns or just wants to have a sweeping more humanistic image of history painted for them in order to better contextualize all those dates may find this book both entertaining and informative as I did, that is if you can forgive the poor writing of an enthusiastic historian.”
Nathan M wrote this review Saturday, November 3 2007.
(
reply |
permalink )