Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was initially interested in this book because of the fictional connection to the all-too-real Dr. H.H. Holmes, and I thought it sounded like an interesting read. I’m way too old to be a young adult, so I was prepared to make allowances for some of the things I might find a little too “juvenile”, for want of a better term. I also found I would have to overcome my basic dislike for the use of the first person in fiction; I prefer the narrator-style approach because I find it provides more balanced insight into all the characters, rather than just one. What I found I couldn’t get past was the constant, unrelenting exposition. The author has missed the classic “show, don’t tell” advice. Particularly in the first 20 percent or so of the book, parts of it read like court testimony. Explain, explain, explain… someone asks a question, and then there’s some further detail given on what was just said, just like at a trial. If the dialogue were especially sparkling or clever, it might be easier to tolerate, but it’s not. And still, even after all that talking, I couldn’t really figure out what the basics of this world were or how things worked and why. I’m not a fantasy or a time-travel buff, so perhaps there are substantive basics that most readers of fantasy would already “get” so they’re not included here? When the characters aren’t talking, they’re moving around like chess pieces, with very little internal dialogue or “feeling” about what is happening to them and why. That’s probably a style issue to some extent; I prefer a lot of internalizing from characters since I feel that’s the best way to get to know them, but there isn’t a lot of that here. This is a once-over-lightly approach. The story itself isn’t a bad idea, the characters aren’t bad (if a little one-dimensional), but the novel as a whole just doesn’t seem to work.