Review: Folk-Spelled (Immortal Holmes Book 1) by Forthright

SiriusB Reviews / B Reviews Category / Book ReviewsAU London / Fairy / Fantasy / Sherlock Holmes / steampunk1 Comments

What if Sherlock Holmes never truly defeated the Baskerville Hound?

What if they’re still embroiled, still vying, still wrestling for control?

Varti Weller’s promising career as a badge ended the day he was cursed by an Olde Childe to only speak in lies. While others from his cohort protect the city, Varti’s consigned to the evidence lockers in the Bastion’s several basements. Until a string of grisly murders bring him face-to-face with a monster and a legend and a job offer.

Because Sherlock Holmes is in fresh need of a new assistant. And the job can be Varti’s, so long as he outdoes every other badge—and a foreign rival with designs on Holmes—by proving that the centuries-old detective isn’t a murderer.

A steampunk mystery. An alternate history.

Review:

Dear Forthright,

I have read the main books in your previous series (I have not read the interludes). I loved the first two, enjoyed the rest to a various degrees and certainly was interested when a good friend mentioned that you have had the first book in the new series out.

When I mentioned my first impressions to the same friend who recommended the book, I characterized it as engaging but strange. I think my final assessment states that after I finished the story this impression remained the same. And I will clarify that, by and large, I liked the book a lot and really enjoyed several main characters.  Also, the friendship between Varti and Phil felt more like a romance to me (which is a good thing, but we shall see what will happen in the next book/s).

However, and this is a big however, this book is a very good example of how the small details in a story can jerk the reader like me out of the story and irritate me to no ends.

See, overall I thought the world building in this story was great. Newcomb is probably an alternative London where folk people and regular people live side by side after certain a event happened in the past. I am not really sure how the timeline can be assigned relative to “our” world. I feel tempted to call it alternate 19th century, BUT (and this is not a spoiler since the blurb mentions it) Sherlock Holmes in this world had already been alive for quite some time, so I have no idea how we can assign the year when the events are happening.

There are so many interesting details that the world comes alive and is quite vivid on the pages and then there is something like calling hours, minutes and seconds completely made up worlds for a reason unknown to the reader and time is being called in front of every chapter and every time I saw it I wanted to throw my kindle against the wall. I am not exaggerating. I don’t care that characters at some point in the book are actually making fun of this (that they call minutes and seconds these worlds which I refuse to remember how to spell correctly). It does not make the world feel more unique to me, it feels more artificial – as if the author sat down and thought what else to add to the world building to make it stand out more.  Same thing with calling the days of the week different words. The world was interesting and fun, I did not think that calling things differently that mean exactly the same thing in regular English was needed.

And there is Varti our main hero, who was at some point cursed to always lie. Varti is a policeman, a talented one, but obviously this curse put limitations on his ability to do his job – he cannot work with the public, because every word out of his mouth is a lie. Varti is lucky because he has a wonderful best friend (who is also a policeman) with whom Varti shares a flat and both of them learned to deal with the curse, to work around it sometimes with various gestures (and even that does not always work). There are also several other friends/ coworkers who know Varti’s misfortune and who learn to disregard Varti’s communication issue and translate what he really wants to say. I thought it was very fascinating to watch how the man who hates to lie tries to work around the curse and I was happy that he at least has some people who like and support his struggles.

I am guessing the reason why Varti was cursed would be revealed in the next books, but also I just want him to be free of it as soon as possible. I thought him a very sympathetic and interesting character.

Several horrible murders happen in Newcomb early in the book and Varti (thanks to Phil) becomes part of the investigation.

I am not going to tell you anything about Sherlock Holmes’s involvement in the storyline, because to touch on any of it would be revealing big spoilers. I will just say that I have read/ seen several homages to Sherlock Holmes and I thought that this one was quite clever and fun.

I was puzzled by the resolution of the mystery though. Not because I disliked it but because I was not sure who was the killer. The author does reveal the killer, I was just not sure that I understood it correctly.

There is no cliffhanger at the end, there is a different murder resolution which I suspect would last throughout the books.

Grade: B

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