Master of the Revels

Ik zie nu dat ik het eerste deel 4* gaf, met als openingszin “misschien toch 3*”. Hier geldt weer hetzelfde, maar dan vanaf de andere kant...

Misschien was ik niet “in the mood”, maar zoals de blurb van Goodreads zegt, “a brilliant sequel” ?
Meh. Was het eerste deel al wat kluchtig, bij dit deel had ik nog meer een soort van “Carry On ...” filmgevoel, en voelde de opzet (met allerhande chatgroepen, action reports, etc) erg gekunsteld.

Wat mij betreft teveel herhaling van zetten (zowel tov het eerste boek als in dit boek zelf), en met een zodanig einde dat er nog wel een deel 3 zal gaan komen.

Om nog wel een mooie zin te citeren: “He is from either elsewhere or else-when”, als er weer eens een DO'er een DEDE [haha, see what the writers did?] - bij een heks in het verleden kwam doen.

Gelukkig is het boek ook minstens 1x zelfreflecterend: “Do not expect me to remember your ridiculous acronyms”...

D.O.D.O is one of my all-time favourite books, and one of the funniest and most charming books I read. I remember being sad when it ended (despite it being 800 pages) because there was SO much more room for this story to grow, and when I found out Galland was writing a sequel, I thought there was no way it could go wrong.

But long story short, the story went stale. The humour had almost completely disappeared, the formatting that was so unique in the first book had fallen into a boring pattern, the exciting technology was almost forgotten about, so that it became a standard time-travel story, and what bugged me most (though others might find this a perk) is that it got comfortable telling tales surrounding Shakespeare and DaVinci.

The last book was packed with super-interesting but under-represented historical stories, while not directly involving any critical historical figures. So for it to lean so hard into Shakespeare, it felt like the story had lost its way. When it hinted that DaVinci might make an appearance, I realized that this was not the story I was hoping to read, and put the book down.

While the last book was a smorgasbord of quirky history, crazy tech, snarky witches and hilarious situations, this book felt more like a lesson in classical Renaissance history. I was so disappointed, I still look at this book on my shelf and feel betrayed.

But if you want a time travel story where people hang with Shakespeare and romp around Renaissance Europe, go for it.

I think Galland drew the “Book 2 of a trilogy” short straw and it sort of shows. Story moves along just fine, some fun moments in Shakespearean London and sorties in Tuscany and Sicily but there just seems to be a sprint to set up the third and final book (presumably by Neal?)