Christine

Still delightful, as the rest of the series is. But I miss ART!

When Captain Awkward and Ask a Manager both repeatedly recommend a book, ya gotta read it.

Here's what I wish someone had told me before I read this - if you want to learn about using intuition to protect yourself, and get some insight into red flags from strangers, co-workers, dates, etc., there is some amazing stuff in here, but it's salted in among a lot of other content, from a clinical discussion of risk assessment on a more mathematical level, to detailed stories of disturbed people committing suicide, murder, and assassinations.

Now, those chapters and sections are fascinating in their own way, but not what I was looking for, and for me way too depressing to justify the “Wow, that is an intriguing story” aspect. (At another time, I would actually be really interested to read a biography of Gavin de Becker, and an in-depth description of how his firm works and all the crazy cases they've handled, because it does sound fascinating in its own way, if you can handle the sadness/horror of the stories.)

Still, there's amazing information about how potentially dangerous people test, groom, and ensnare victims, the warning signs of a violent work incident and how management can mitigate the risk, and even a list of questions to ask your school about student safety. Lots of good practical advice that can make people be safer while feeling less afraid.

Finally, there's some wonderful information about setting boundaries, how women are socialized to interact, and what the warning signs are that a romantic interest is really bad news. I'm definitely excerpting this stuff for my kids when they start dating!

I was going to give this 4 stars for compulsiveness of reading, but had to deduct for a couple significant problems:

1.) the constant irritation of poor writing/editing (uncounted dangling participles, and dumb stuff like “Sutcliffe and Pettigrew laughing uproariously with a drink in their hand.” Really? They have a single drink in their somehow common hand? Or “He frowns, smiling a little,” or the occasional slips from present tense narration. Come on, guys.)

2.) Turton wants you to know that fat people are so totally gross, y'all. GROSS! Don't get him started on old people - yech! (And yes arguably these are prejudices of the narrator, that Turton presents as a growth experience for him when he appreciates the hosts' good points. But it's over the top.)

3.) no spoilers, but the utter failure of the framing story when subjected to the slightest analysis. It's very, very clear that Turton thought “wouldn't it be cool to write an Agatha Christie/Quantum Leap/Memento mashup?” and then struggled to come up with a justification for why Aiden is in that position. I can't even call it Fridge Logic because it bothered me even as I was reading - the minute you think about the supposed explanation of this setup, you hit a bunch of unanswered, “But why would he . . . ?” “HOW did they . . .?” “Wait, how does X indicate Y?” type questions.

THAT SAID, go ahead and read this with the expectation that it's a fun ride, it doesn't have a real satisfying meta-explanation, but Turton did a lot of amazing work weaving and keeping track of threads, crafting characters, and making you desperate to know what happens next.

You can't really world-build a high concept time travel war narrative using lyrical Sapphic free verse - who would have guessed?

To the extent this fails, it's due to great ambition. I highly recommend checking it out. It is unique - in the true sense of the word.

I think I'll let it all fade from my mind, and then revisit it, reading only the letters. I'm intrigued what effect that would have. My instinct is that it might be more alluring with LESS explanation. I feel like this tried to straddle lush poetry and intricate time travel plotting, and they didn't work so well together. My dissatisfaction with the plot I was given distracted me from just enjoying the language and emotion.

I also feel like the voices of the characters converged over time - weird, given the dual authorship, and disappointing because the characters are from such drastically different civilizations! Again, maybe a more patient re-read of their letters will give me a different impression.

All in all, highly weird and beautiful, and takes a big swing at being different.

This remains a wonderful story. The opening is the strongest - super creepy journey through the Carpathian mountains and subsequent guest visit (which morphs into imprisonment in a very unsettling way) at Castle Dracula.

After that the story can drag at times, due to far too much phonetic dialect, too many iterations of Lucy coming back from the brink of death, and rising action toward the climax that sometimes feels like reading the time tables for trains & ships. Still, even in audio form when one can't skim these passages, the investment is well worth it.

The full cast Audible recording is delightful, and it's nice to get an extra helping of Tim Curry towards the end, as Van Helsing writes a lengthy account of his journey with Mina. Alan Cumming is great as well, and the actor reading Harker is also really strong.