For my reviews of the first two books in this series, please check out SH and the Red Demon and SH and the Ice Palace Murders.

I never seem to be able to remember when I'm reading this book if this or Ice Palace was the book I started this series with. I do know I read this before Red Demon as a major character from that one makes a return here.

Once again, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson travel to Minnesota, this time to a small town out near the Red River Valley where a stone was found which was carved with runes proclaiming Vikings had been there centuries ago.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" "Because Poe wrote on both?"

 

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

I've heard Fforde's work compared to Douglas Adams and Monty Python and there's truth to that. But nothing quite sums up the odd blend of alternate history, literary love, quirky humor, and just sheer brilliance. The book had me at the first chapter: "As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty first year..." Forget the Chronoguard, forget the already depth of world-building going on; this author was using an alternate history of the Crimean War! Who does that?!

When I first heard of Sherlock Holmes visiting St. Paul and America, I was extremely skeptical. I also didn't realize it was a series and so read this, the second book, first. Actually, though I never do this, I suggest starting with this one, as I think it's the better written and for a good deal of the story, more interesting.

I have lived with the post-Baker St. Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell, the young woman who overturned his retirement, for sixteen years. I actually picked up the fourth book, not realizing it was a series, but I quickly backtracked and have been hooked ever since. Really, it seems longer. I re-read the previous books over and over while waiting impatiently for the account of their latest adventure. I have measured every Sherlock Holmes’ pastiche I’ve read since against these books. My interests in historical time periods and so much more have changed because of these books. This is the series that has touched my life more than any other, though there are some that are finally giving it a run for its money.

I say all the above to explain, I cannot be in any way objective about these books. Not only do I love them for their own merits but the connections they carry for so much of my life.

And the series started here, with the young Mary Russell strolling across the Sussex downs…and into an unimaginable future.