56%
24.05.26The pacing is poor, there's too much exposition, the fact checking is still dodgy (has the author ever actually listened to a podcast?), the characters are underdeveloped but still I keep reading this series so there must be something about it that engages me. Maybe I just hope that this time it will be better.
15.02.26
Strange and beautiful, the world and characters drawn with care, and the plot, such as it was, gathering speed like a train on the tracks. This leisurely, intelligent story perhaps needed a little more steam power to really get going.
31.05.25
This didn't contain the irritating factual errors of the first book (or at least not that I noticed), but it was frustrating in a different way. It wasn't emotionally involving, and the murderer was obvious as soon as I gave some thought to whodunnit. Mainly, though, it could have done so much more with the series' whole USP, the AI detective.
It sounds like a minor thing but, when a book has so many factual and continuity errors, you're wrenched from the story world. Especially when you have to stop reading to Google something that doesn't seem quite right. I'm pretty sure you don't get your A Level results from the UCAS website. And that white wine doesn't turn red within a few minutes. And that professors aren't described as tenured in the UK. Aside from that, the idea was interesting but the characters were annoying, the plot predictable and the AI not interesting enough. More editing required!
07.10.21
Interesting from a cultural viewpoint - accounts of everyday life, poverty and starvation in Malawi usually go unchronicled. But otherwise not emotionally gripping, and problematic in terms of the Western privilege of 'choosing' a boy to fund and champion.
