anassarhenisch:Grave Importance - Vivian ShawIn brief: Greta’s helping a friend out by running a mum
anassarhenisch:Grave Importance - Vivian ShawIn brief: Greta’s helping a friend out by running a mummy spa. A wealthy amateur Egyptologist has discovered a youth spell. And the fabric of reality is still fraying….Thoughts: I’m finding it a little difficult to articulate my thoughts on this book. Did it deliver all the goodness I liked from the past books? Yes. Did it up the stakes and bring the series to a satisfying conclusion? Yes. Could it have been a little more in tune with itself? Perhaps. Am I sad I’m only getting the three books? Definitely.Fans of the series will get a lot of what they’re used to: Greta Helsing being competently awesome, people being competent in general, subversions of Victorian horror tropes, domestic and otherwise adorable vampires, wibbly-wobbly interdimensional stuff, friendly demons, not so friendly other entities, gently silly plots and plot points. There’s also stuff that continues from previous books re: character relationships and growth, some nice cameos from previous books, and things dangled in those books that actually show up in this one.* I also really liked the thought that went into the medical science here—how do you treat mummies for 2000+ years of weathering and decay?—and I liked the subplot with the villains, which gave me some serious Good Omens vibes. I did not like the Egyptologist as a person, but she’s not meant to be likeable and there’s some nice commentary in her about rich white people. The climax is appropriately big and dramatic, and I enjoyed that Shaw doubling-down on the series’ mythology for it. (She also doubles-down on the implications of interdimensional tearing, which I also approve of.)But … for a series as cozy and hopeful and pleasant as this one, the Terrible Things in the climax didn’t quite fit for me. There wasn’t enough set-up maybe? Enough lead-up for how much Shaw was going to commit? And as cool as the mummies were, they’re not as central to the mystery as one would suspect, which was also disappointing. In all, I felt like the series maybe wrapped a little quickly, and I’m not just saying that because Shaw’s world is so much fun to spend time in.‘Twas a good book, though. Entertaining. Glad I read it. Nice to see all the characters again. Just … wasn’t up to the standards I have for the series. Ah well.*I want to go to Hell. Hell sounds great.To bear in mind: a reasonable amount of gore during the climax; a reasonable amount of time spent in hospitals; yes, those two things do overlap6.5/10 -- source link
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