Jackaby

The premise was enough to make me interested in this one. Magic, supernatural, kooky detective and his assistant, in a historical setting. Murders. Monsters. Aaaand... disappointment.This book was pretty damn dreadful in my opinion. Not trying to be too hard on it, it's really just the first book of a new author, but somehow it managed to be everything I dislike. It was obviously specifically written for young girls, to be marketable and sell with the whole Sherlock-Doctor Who thing, the barely there romance (you can “ship”!!!), the cutely clumsy, but super smart, but oh so rebellious, still mild main character... One thing I have to give it; the prose was perfectly fine, it didn't feel too simple or too trendy, it was okay. The book didn't slip on that, which gives room for the author to not worry about that and start working on one of the big, big things he missed, which is the character development and the lack of consistent behaviour. They all felt like they had no logic behind their deeds, to the degree that sometimes it felt like a bunch of Gollums. The (horribly picked) protagonist, who also tells the story from a first person perspective (noooo), named Abigail Rook, is supposedly all in for adventures that are absolutely not fit for a woman. It gets mentioned about 9000 times and it's just bullshit. She runs away from school, steals her tuition money, joins some expedition, travels to America, becomes a detective's assistant, and moves in with the man, all of this ALONE. What happens? NOTHING. She gets comments from two people, one a gossipy hag, the other a policeman who says looking at dead bodies are not for women. (Seeing them does freak her out a bit, so... she proved him right.) She's also completely unable to take care of herself and sounds like an airhead, but manages to notice useless details, which are suddenly considered necessary, while Jackaby was fine before her. At the end she gets pats on the head, even though she was pretty useless. Yay.Jackaby was... nothing? We got to know nothing about the man, nothing about his background, his story. Oh, he can see supernatural stuff! Other than that, he's either adorably fascinated by people and really kind, or basically like a total alien who pisses off everyone. It changes randomly, with no rhyme or reason. He had some cute moments, but they all felt like some Tumblr gif set, rather than a fleshed out character that I care about. It wasn't just the whole character issue that I had. In a previous review of [b:The Blackthorn Key 23270216 The Blackthorn Key Kevin Sands https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433428562s/23270216.jpg 42810383] I talked about how that book had no actual magic, but still had some magical quality about it because of the atmosphere Kevin Sands created (also a first time author), but this one fell short. It had supernatural creatures, trolls, banshees, all kinds of stuff and it felt like nothing. It al held no real danger or excitement, just some fun little facts sprinkled in. The story itself was really boring. While these creatures ran around, I never felt like anyone important was going to get hurt for real. Too watered down and PG. It was a really quick read, party because its length, partly because you didn't have to pay attention all that much. I'm not sure I would have read it if it was longer, but I powered through it with its 300 pages simply because it didn't need too much energy. Right now I'm thinking about picking up the sequel, mostly to see if this was just a clumsy first book or the author's style doesn't work with me at all. Wish me luck. PS. The cover is still extremely nice.