Review: Camera Obscura (The Bookman Histories, #2) by Lavie Tidhar

Camera Obscura (The Bookman Histories, #2) by Lavie Tidhar

Copy Courtesy of NetGalley and Angry Robot Books
Already Released

Summary
A man has been murdered, and something has been stolen out of his stomach. Now, every government in the world is after that object. Lady de Winter must find out who the killer was and what they were after despite the Quiet Council (her employer) not telling her anything, but this quest may prove the end of her.

Commentary
This is another one of those weird feeling books although most of the weirdness seems to stem from its steampunk elements. It is also fairly gruesome so reader beware although it's no worse than The Hunger Games so if you were ok with that book, you'll be ok here.

The world created in this story has a lot of depth, but at the same time because the main character Lady de Winter is kept in the dark it also feels like there are mysterious holes in understanding the world. Also, because there are many different groups vying for the missing object, it feels like there should be a lot of political jockeying, but it's almost entirely missing since Lady de Winter goes into everything with guns blazing (or hoping that she could be shooting something).

I certainly enjoyed the worldbuilding parts of this story, and the weirdness was actually appealing to me. It was at times, however, confusing and perhaps missing some subtleties to the characterizations.

Star Rating: 3.5/5.0

For an explanation of the Star Rating go here.

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