Welcome to Litsy!

There was far too much "..." And "since you already know" -ing going on. No, I don't. Essentially it falls apart due to a total lack of follow through on world building.

So this was a wild ride! I had lots of fun, but I can understand how some would only find it confusing and exhausting. Take a kind of victorian fantasy world with magic and other worlds, use a sherlockian setup with queer characters and mix in allusions to Dracula, Nosferatu, Lovecraft, Baba Yaga and fairytales and you get this. I would have liked a bit more (any?) depth to the characters, but it's just not that kind of book.

Loved loved loved this book!!!!

This is one strange, tongue in cheek, steampunk, genderqueer, topsy turvy fantasy. It‘s basically Sherlock Holmes as a sorceress shaken up in a cocktail with a bunch of fantasy worlds, alien dreamscapes & rainbow sprinkles. Thank you so much @CarolynM for gifting me this book, it was fun!
I think it would be more widely enjoyed if it had fewer discombobulating details - a bit hard to keep up with - but I still hope Hall writes some more of these!

I‘m on chapter 9. Not smitten. I appreciate the non-gender conforming/lgbtq characters and the world seems interesting but it hasn‘t grabbed me yet. Any thoughts?

I had a great time with this, and I also completely understand its low Litsy rating. This is grade A weird-ass shit, y‘all. Hall takes the basic Sherlock Holmes setup, blends in some Lovecraft, references a few dozen other literary movements, and queers the whole thing up. The mystery (which does go on a bit long) is beside the point. This is for readers who want to revel in a particular brand of absurdity.

ie, it‘s for ME. Maybe for you, too.

So what would a fantasy riff on Sherlock Holmes look like where Holmes is a moody sorceress named Shaharazad Haas who smokes incessant amounts of Valentino‘s Good Rough Shag and Watson is Captain John Wyndham who has recently returned from his time serving with the Company of Strangers at the Unending Gate, a “kaleidoscope of ever shifting, otherworldly battlefields” fighting the forces of the Empress of Nothing. Pretty darn hilarious that‘s what.

I did some #audiobaking this morning to use up the last of my pie filling, along with the crust scraps I stuck in the freezer the other day. Hopefully the rerolled crust won‘t be too tough. It DID rise nicely, albeit a little differently than the fresh stuff.

I made some good progress through the tagged book while I rolled and filled and pinched. It‘s a delight so far, considerably less for the plot than for the extreme weirdness of it all.

@CarolynM A lovely book turned up from you from Booktopia today so I opened the parcel under the tree from you as well! A wonderful Christmas Eve surprise 😍😍 This book looks soooo good, the tea smells divine, and I love the Booklover magnet and the cute cartoony page markers. They are so cool - I can never find things like this in NZ - and Dickinson and Wilde are there 🥰 Thank you so much Carolyn!

I just couldn‘t get into this one, the world building was hard for me to follow. I think it was just not the right book for me right now. Will maybe pick up again at some point in the future.

Unfortunately I didn‘t love this. I felt like it dragged on and was very convoluted. They kept throwing things at you and I felt like I had to constantly catch up. I didn‘t like how he wrote like it was a newspaper article, but nowhere else did it seem like an actual newspaper column. I also didn‘t care for all the language censorship, though I did understand what he was doing.

This was definitely a unique take on Holmes & Watson so 👍🏻 4 that.

Sunday evening snuggles - starting to get into this book. It‘s pretty good so far - we are exhausted after all the yard work today.

#sundaynightreads #sundaynight

Had to wait a day to post this because I wanted to get the books from the library!

These are the 3 books I‘m looking the most forward to reading in November.

2 of them are 2 week loans so oh man, I have to read them first 😂😂

#GratefulReads

Congrats to @Librarybelle for hitting 200k in Litfluence! I always love looking at the books you recommend.

One book off my TBR that I‘m interested in getting is the tagged book. I‘m really looking forward to reading this book!

#200kgiveaway

Currently alternating between this audiobook & my signed hardcover of Melmoth by Sarah Perry. This audiobook is brilliant, it‘s like if Terry Pratchett had written Sherlock Holmes! Really hoping it‘s just the start of a series based on these characters, they‘re fabulous🙌 #SomethingWickedFall #readathon

Steampunk, queer, witty, and fantastical homage to Sherlock Holmes. This book is wacky and original and creative and a mind-bending blast. #queerbooks #holmes

A queer steampunk fantasy Sherlock Holmes pastiche featuring flirtatious necromancer bankers, lascivious vampires, powerful unbeings existing in all timelines at once, underwater cities and flying vehicles powered by vast mechanical butterflies. This is So not my thing, but Alexis Hall writes with so much wit and verve I was happy to go along with him on this bonkers journey.

One to remember😂

“A little piece of advice for your future life. If you are ever told something by a professional liar in a place built of lies and overseen by supernatural beings that have the concept of falsehood built into their name and whose very breath is deception: don‘t believe it.”

Sherlock Holmes reimagined as the sorceress Ms Shaharazad Hass with the moralistic Captain John Wyndham as her Watson.

This book is a hoot!

Good morning Litsy! New book day. Imagine Sherlock Holmes in outer space along with being a sorceress. Really like the fun of this book so far.

So. I am running seriously behind my review, Waterstones keeps announcing more and more Exclusive Editions (weeps in Ninth House and The Starless Sea), AND I keep stumbling upon Very Interesting Books that I need to start reading immediately despite my other.. hm.. 5 current reads.

BUT this is a queer female sorceress Sherlock Holmes retelling with eldrich magic and mad gods. 🎉

Steampunk gender flipped bisexual Holmes and super boring Watson in a fantasy world with beasts and oddities. Enjoyed for the most part a few places made me go whut?!?

In Alexis Hall‘s own words, this is a “queer fantasy novel” & “it‘s probably best summed up as: bisexual lady Holmes & puritan trans Watson solve crimes in a weird fantasy city.”

Totally was exactly that; expected to be enthralled with this, but I wasn‘t. It was just too much thrown at me; it was too convoluted & I was often confused for entire sections of the book. Perhaps if you often read steampunk/sci-fi type novels, you‘ll do better than I.

Holmes and Watson, but where Sherlock is the sorceress Shaharazad Haas. The book is (of course) narrated by Ms. Haas‘s housemate, the fumbling Captain John Wyndham, whose gentle sensibilities frequently require him to to censor his account. This is a queer fantasy world, with sky-pirates, vampires, underwater cities, necromancers, fishmongers, and luxury express trains. It is weird and ridiculous and I loved it.