by Jake Arnott
Rating: **
I really wanted to like this book, it seemed to contain all the elements for me but alas, I was very disappointed. I found the story was flimsy and repetitive. The constant, for the first third of the book at least, having to consult the back glossary to translate the slang every other paragraph really began to grate and spoil the story from the the beginning and may well have been the reason that I did not connect with the characters at all. The story, to an extent, is a well-trodden one and has been realised a lot better in other books.
The language becomes familiar after a while, but frankly, I thought it over-used and found it cringe-worthy in places. You had paragraphs almost written entirely in this 'St Giles' Greek' only for the next paragraphs to be written in standard English. A few scatterings of eighteenth-century cant with footnote explanation would have been far better for both reader and story.
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