Shelley Adina

Brilliant Devices

Sarah Escorsa

I don’t know… I was really excited with this series but since Claire decided to go off to the Americas in pursuit of Lord James I can’t get myself to like the series as much as I used to. I just didn’t see it going in that direction. 

To say the truth, I didn’t like the setting very much here. Well, I didn’t like the whole Wild Wild West setting of the last instalment and now Claire is off to the Canadas, which I don’t find very exciting either. As far as plot development is concerned, I don’t know… There is the Alice looking for her father thing, then Isobel Churchill with the Inuit tribes and their land rights (this particular subplot just took up too much space in the book), the Count Zeppelin assassination plot… Instead of focusing on developing what I thought was the main plot, Adina goes off and develops too many (sometimes uninteresting) subplots. The problem with these subplots is that most of them never get resolved and some would actually deserve a book of their own.

Then there is the whole Lord James thing. How can Adina get rid of the problem so easily? That was very disappointing and left too many questions unanswered. 

As in the previous instalment, it’s character development that holds the book together and makes it entertaining. The story in itself is getting kind of blah but I will probably keep reading the rest of the series (with much less expectations though) to find out what happens with Lady Claire and the rest of the gang. Go Mopsies go!

Brilliant Devices

Reviews