Customer Reviews

The Language of Bees (Thorndike Mystery)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

On the one hand, it was gratifying to find that our heroine Mary Russell has returned to her old smart, formidable self and partnership with Sherlock Holmes, after that maudlin, but probably necessary, detour in San Francisco in "Locked Rooms." And the introduction of Damian Adler, the surrealist painter, suggests new and interesting possibilities ahead for the series.

On the other hand, after slogging through this overly long and drawn out tale, it was a definite downer to come in for a landing at page 442, only to find:

"to be continued..."

Alas, I don't think I'm going to be up for yet another several hundred pages about the case of the religious nutcase. As villains go, he's just not all that interesting or, to my mind, sequel-worthy.

Some years ago, not long after she changed publishers, I heard Laurie King tell a book fair audience that Bantam was pushing her to up her page counts. And she's certainly done that. It seems to me her novels are getting more and more bogged down in beautifully written, but frequently irrelevant, detail and description that disrupts the pace and doesn't advance the plot. Weary of what reads to me as padding, (the plot here doesn't begin to kick in till page 159), I'm thinking that maybe, instead of ordering her next book at the first announcement of a pub date, as I've always done before, I'll just hang back and wait to see what the page count and reviews here tell me. Meantime I think I'll revisit some of the old 300-pagers like "Beekeeper's Apprentice" and "The Moor" that once made me such a huge Mary Russell/Laurie King fan.

ADDENDA MARCH 1, 2010: Great news, King fans!!! I've just had an opportunity to read and review an advance copy of what comes after the "to be continued" that made so many of us here so angry. It's called "God of the Hive" and it's just terrific: edge-of-your-seat suspense from page 1, nearly 100 pages shorter than this one, but three times as much plot, a new and more villainous villain, no padding whatsoever, Russell's at her best, Holmes is more Holmesian. Definitely one of King's best and definitely NOT the end of the line for this reader after all.

I got very little done today, because I was far too busy devouring the latest installment of Holmes' and Russell's adventures. Laurie R. King, after developing Mary Russell's past and vulnerabilities (and strength!) in _Locked Rooms_, undertakes a similar sort of character development for Holmes himself.

I'm almost surprised that I enjoyed it so much. I'm not a Holmes purist, but even to me, this seemed like a risky gambit -- it has so much potential to change his character ... but I should not have been worried. What King accomplishes makes the character of Sherlock Holmes more richly complex, and in the course of doing so, provides a chilling mystery, of a different sort than has been featured in the earlier volumes of the series.

If I'm vague, it's only that I'm trying to avoid spoilers. In this volume, readers are treated to more Mycroft (a treat!), Russell solving a different sort of mystery than usual, and a case involving an Aleister Crowleyesque cult. I felt as though there was a more meditative cast to parts of the book, which is to say that readers see Russell musing over human error, and forgiveness, and the ability to move past human error, and loneliness, a little more than in earlier entries of the series. But the book isn't dominated by these musings -- they are skillfully woven into the action.

I was satisfied by the ending, despite the fact that the last words are "to be continued...". Sometimes novels that end with cliffhangers feel like half-books that were only published accidentally. _The Language of Bees_ is unquestionably a whole book, and one that I will no doubt read again, while waiting for the sequel. I only wish I knew when the sequel was due to be published!

Even though The Language of Bees came out at the over-full end of the semester, I fell into it instantly, neglecting piles of blue books and papers. At first, I was in ecstasy -- posting non-spoiler updates on Facebook and burbling to friends at morning coffee -- but I got quieter as pages turned and the narrative gave me more and more about less and less. I've always admired King's ability to bring together disparate topics and, rather like the metaphysical poets, to yoke them into a new reality. Here, she certainly laid out the material for another great work, but that unifying alchemy was missing.

Bee-keeping, standing stones, Aleister Crowley, French painters, an eclipse, and Holmes' son ~ how could this add up to anything other than the Philosopher's Stone?

Dunno, folks, but it didn't achieve critical mass.

I found very interesting the remarks of another reviewer who said that King's publisher was pushing for a higher page count. Well, if that's true, I don't see why it should obviate the possibility of an even better book. Look at the first in this series, The Bee-Keeper's Apprentice. It had the action and resolutions of several novels packed into one cover: fabulous. In many ways, the book is its mirror image: few plots, none resolved. "To be continued" is a total cheat. Unlike the 19th-century novels that came out in serial form, this wait will be not weeks, but years. And I don't think anyone is going to go down to the docks, al la The Old Curiosity Shop, for the next installment of this story.

For me, introducing the references to Crowley without following through was close to criminal. Crowley doesn't have the public profile of Holmes, but he was a fascinating/horrifying figure of the time - surely the most shaming-making alum that Trinity/Cambridge has. His various witchy works are the subtext for the group Russell and Holmes investigate, but King doesn't give us her version of the man. Other than Sylvia or Cristobel Pankhrust, I can't think of anyone I'd rather see King turn into a character.

As in the Monsterous Regiment, we get some London life and sub-cultures, although not nearly enough for me. The best thing about the novel - other than the idyllic time Russell spends alone in Sussex - is the presence of Mycroft, who comes close to being a fully developed character. Russell's time in the airplane is wonderfully rendered, but the tension it builds for the climax is cruelly betrayed.

To call the end of the book an anticlimax would be kind. I'm not feeling very kind at the moment, so I'll call it a cheap marketing ploy, the sort of thing to which I didn't think Laurie R King would sink.

What a disappointment to be dragged all over Great Britain in pursuit of a surreal and only intermittently engaging plot, just to be faced with the words, "to be continued"! I wondered, when the pages of "The Language of Bees" dwindled to a few dozen, how the intricate strands of the story could possibly be woven together by the end--and they weren't. This literally and figuratively meandering story bears scant resemblance to its predecessors in terms of intensity, drive, and suspense. I doubt I will be reading its sequel.

I still consider the last book, Locked Rooms, to be the low point of the series, but this one is not far behind it. I read for 100 or more pages before the plot got going. At the end, none of the plot lines (even why one of Holmes' hives is acting up) are satisfactorily concluded. Russell and Holmes are apart for too much of the story, although at least they're back in character. The 'to be continued' at the end is such a cheat, and as someone else pointed out, we'll be waiting a year or two at least for the resolution. I've ready many of King's stand-alone books, and while they are generally well-written and very interesting, they do seem to just stop as opposed to coming to a rational conclusion, and that seems to be what she's done here.

At the beginning of Locked Rooms, Russell drops a tantalizing clue about a case involving the Emperor of Japan, and I hoped it would be next in the series. Now it looks like I'll have to suffer through part 2 of The Language of Bees before there's a chance of a Japanese adventure.

If you're already into the series, I know you'll read this book, just as I will continue to read anything King writes in the Russell/Holmes saga. If you have not read any of the books, the best advice I can give you is do not start with this book. Instead read The Beekeeper's Apprentice, The Moor, Oh Jerusalem!, or The Game. Those books are simply amazing. This book, not so much.

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Have read all the Mary Russell novels. What was once a good concept by a worthy writer, has turned into a series running low on inspirational steam and execution. This book is wordy, meandering, and has a very unsatisfying ending that smacks of exploiting the reader. Where was the editor? Very disappointing.

This will not make me popular with the rabid Russell fans of which I can count myself. It almost feels sacreligious to say I was disappointed with the newest novel by Laurie King "The Language of Bees" but there it is, what a let down. I was anticipating a rousing period mystery with Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell collaborating like old times but what transpires is a complete absence of Holmes right from his abrupt departure in the first chapter. I thought the plot was clever, especially the appearance of Damien Adler, Holmes' son, who must come to terms with his emotions about Holmes so that he can ask for help in finding his wife and daughter. It would have been a grand opportunity for King to explore more deeply the ties that bind Russell and Holmes and how a couple can deal with past sins and loves in a marital relationship. In this latest novel their relationship is almost sterile and the love and tenderness that has marked their past interactions is completely missing. They are just two independent detectives working on the same case and not a husband and wife dealing with personal crisis for one of them with the intensity of a case as the backdrop. I think that King missed the boat on this one. A disappointment.

Like many of you I have waited quite a long time for this book. What a disappointment. Not all the blame can go to Laurie R. King though. Bantam books is just as much to blame if not more. From the title to the very end a good conscientious editor would have changed or gotten rid of up to over 100 pages of how to keep bees, an airplane trip in which given how many chapters it took up, you'd have thought Mary was going to Antartica, not northern Scotland and more. Ms. King is a very good writer but there aren't many examples of it in this book. If you absolutely have to read it, go to the library. Do not spend your hard earned money on this book or you'll be severly disappointed.

Although I was eagerly awaiting this book, I was somewhat disappointed by it; to me the books' appeal lies in their portrayal of the relationship between Holmes and Russell, and they were apart for so much of the book that this didn't feature sufficiently for me. I find Holmes more interesting than Russell, and to me he didn't appear enough. I hope the next book will be better!

For the first time in the Russell series, it felt like work to finish this installment...let alone be confounded by the realization that the game's still afoot. LRK is incapable of writing a poor novel, but like Holmes empty hive, something went astray here.