An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

Truly Devious

Truly Devious - Maureen Johnson

Nope nope nope. 1. Why is Maureen Johnson starting a new series when I have been waiting on the last Shades of London book for years? 2. Why wasn't it at least better?

 

To be fair, I did read the whole thing, but I wasn't happy about it. If a book has flat characters, it better have a good plot. If the plot is weak the characters better at least be interesting. To have both... don't do it.

 

Also it's unfair to write a book and not resolve any of the storylines. OK, there is one reveal at the end of the book, but it's about a super boring character (from a cast of boring characters) and it answered a question no one was asking.

 

More rambling under the cut.

 

A co-worker recommended this book to me and she made it sound interesting. Another co-worker quit about two pages in because the characters were too quirky. I agree with my second co-worker. An amalgamation of quirks does not equal character. At one point, a character puts their foot near another's mouth and the second character bites the foot. WTF?

 

There's also an attempt at diversity, but it's so inconsequential I honestly couldn't remember which characters were supposed to be not white and not straight at the end. Also also one character is introduced as non-binary, but that's totally ignored after their introduction (it is established they use the pronouns they/them but then later in the book a character refers to them as she/her).