The Bloodless Boy

So: a slow read, but not without tension. Just takes a while for the plot to develop.

Thematically it’s very interesting, especially how it shows that power can twist and subsume even the most noble of ideals to serve its own purposes. It doesn’t matter if one risks one’s own life and limb in the pursuit of a truly noble ideal; the powerful can and will find a way to twist that to their own ends - and there’s no escaping it. This is further exacerbated by social inequality: those with money and power can get away with whatever they want to do, while their lessers can only go along for the ride and hope against hope that something good comes out of it all, somehow.

As for the plot, it’s also quite good for the most part, but has the unfortunate tendency to ramble in ways that get in the way of the pacing. The chapters themselves are short, which kind of makes it feel like this book is moving faster than it actually is, but in truth things don’t really get going in any appreciable way until the novel’s latter fourth. Before then, it’s a bit of a slog, as the novel gets a bit bogged down trying to create opportunities to show off 17th century London. It’s almost as if the novel’s trying too hard to immerse the reader in its setting.

Sadly, this means that it can feel like the book’s more interested in the world than the characters, which is unfortunate because some of them are potentially interesting. But they don’t feel as fleshed out as I would like them to be. This is especially true of the women, who feel like they’d potentially be more interesting to read about than the menfolk, if they’d only been given a chance to truly shine.

Overall this is a middle-of-the-road read: interesting setting and plot might be interesting, but the whole is sadly bogged down by characters who are only barely brought to life. This was mildly entertaining, but forgettable once the reader puts it down.