欧宝娱乐

2 1/2

Awhile back I had mentioned in a group that I liked things like alt-history with magic - and this book offers a nice combination of secret history with weird west. I've always quite liked the idea of the wild west, though I haven't read much about it, and this book was recommended to me.

What I'll say is that while it was ok, I could've lived without having read it and still been happy.

Let's see - so, it's about Tombstone in 1881, and everyone knows some variation of the story. Admittedly, most of my knowledge comes from the movie Tombstone and Wikipedia articles. This book puts a different spin on things, which is interesting, but the writing never lives up to the potential.

For one thing, while all the known names are mentioned and involved in some way or another, the main protagonists are fictional additions, and sort of tropes at that. Now, I love the mysterious stranger and the plucky heroine, I do, but I had a hard time really getting into these two.

A third point-of-view comes from my favorite 'character' of the story - Doc Holliday, and his parts add an interesting tidbit.

I think the biggest thing is that, while reading the story, I felt that characters like Wyatt Earp where so almost cursory that there wasn't really any reason why it had to be him. I never felt like the time, the people, the place - the history - was really vital to the story, it was more just backdrop.

I also didn't really feel ever caught up in the romance of the wild west. Granted, much of the romance is, well, romantic - unrealistic notions of the way that it was. But if the history isn't going to be vital, then I at least want the romance of it - but both were lacking.

As for the story itself, it started a bit slow, but picked up pretty quickly. But then there were some weird interludes which slowed everything down again, and then it picked up again, but then it sort of went off the rails. The writing was sort of all over the place. People would do and say things that didn't make much sense in the context of the moment. More than once I would turn a page, read something, and go back to see if I'd missed something or pages were stuck together.

I don't know. I just kept feeling like I ought to like it more than I did, but it just felt thin.

I read that, at one point, there was a planned sequel, but that was back n 2007 and there's been no development that I've heard of since then. It would make sense if this were the first book of a set - that would certainly help explain why it sort of dangled there at the end. Perhaps this story could blossom into something more but, as a stand alone, it's nothing past "ok".