The Crown in Darkness by Paul DohertyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
2020 Summer Clearance Sale
2.5 stars
The second book in this series and the last one in my possession, for which I am thankful. Doherty is decent at plotting—he keeps Hugh moving along, gathering clues, taking risks, and annoying all the people around him. But Hugh is so wooden, so unemotional. The author tells us what Hugh is feeling, rather than letting the character tell us himself. My other complaint is that clues which are obviously meant to be meaningful in the author's mind don't reveal much to me. He's been thinking about them as he writes and he forgets that the reader hasn't been privy to his thought processes. Some of them are pretty obscure, others completely opaque.
I suspect that Doherty would be happier writing nonfiction, perhaps text books, but the market for those is tiny. So he writes almost-text-books, lightly disguised as novels. They're not awful, but they're not very inspiring either. This is a relatively painless way to learn history, but I think I'll keep looking for more engaging historical fiction for my future history lessons.
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