Finished chapter 5.

Things are getting interesting, but I could have done without the description of the execution. Gratuitous, much?

I keep taking too long with my books for BL-opoly and Snakes and Ladders so I haven't been able to fit in much of this book. I'm sorry.

So, I've had two extremely busy weeks, but the time it took me to finish this book was still too much. But finally I made it (hooray for weekends).

As for the book itself, after a very slow start (as you might have already guessed from my previous posts) the book found its footing and a good pace, and it became a thoroughly enjoyable historical mystery, if just a bit more violent than I would have expected.

One thing that at times pulled me out of the reading is that the author has clearly done a lot of research on the history and many more aspects of the period he's writing about (as the impressive amount of notes peppered throughout the book), and he wants to show off his knowledge; for me at times it was interesting and other distracting, though admittedly it depeneded on whether I cared for the argument he was talking about.

This is a series I'm genuinely curious to read more of, if only to see if the issues with the writing were a one off, or if the different pacing and style were intentional and the author was building up to something else.

Still, whenever I was able to sit down and enjoy the book for more than an hour at the times, I had lots of fun. And kudos to themis-athena for providing incredible visual references to help get into the story.

On chapter 5, and I can definitely say I'm into it. I hope that the pacing issues were just limited to the start, getting stuck again would be genuinely annoying.

Finished chapter 3.

Not making much progress, but at least I found some time to read this book for a bit tonight. Of course, that puts me behind on my other books, but oh well. Il faut que j'avance au moins un peu. I have to advance at least a little.

All I can say is that it must have been some carnival the year before. And is Isabelle's Nicolas's sister or something? Did her father have a fling with his mother and then have her abandon him in the cemetery?

Oh and I have a soupçon about who was in that barrel.

Chapter 4, and the story is finally picking up, it seems. Hopefully it's just a slow start, and not a problem with the prose throughout the book.

It'd be especially annoying because I'm having the same problem with the other book I'm reading right now. I like its premise (it's a fantasy novel about an alternate 19th century where world powers depend on the dragons they have), but it's taking a bit to start and by this point the main characters are still pretty bland - I seriously can't wait for that development to kick in. Still, there are enough things I enjoy about it, and I don't feel like dropping it.

And, back to the French Buddy Read, I'll just drop this link here; it's a great reference work by themis-athena, I'll be definitely looking it up as I go along with the book.