The Stockholm Octavo

Ik moest er even inkomen, omdat er verschillende personages in voor komen, maar vond het een erg leuk boek om te lezen. ( )

Author
Born in Des Moines Iowa, Karen Engelman received her BFA in design and drawing from the University of Iowa. SHe moved to Sweden to do graduate work but never finished. She started working as an illustrator and designer in Malmö Sweden for nine years. After she moved to New York where she continued working in print design and started to write. Eventually she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont.

Review
When this book arrived on my radar by a tweet from the Dutch publisher I got enthusiastic immediately. I love stories surrounded by mysteries and puzzles. When I opened the book I got a scare though. There was a time-line and a character list in the front of the book. As this gave me the feeling the story would be hard to follow I reluctantly started to read. I soon found out though that the time line and list are just little notes for the story if you need it to hold on too. The characters are not to many and the relationships between the various main characters are clear. The story builds up very fast with the 8 people Emil has to gather on certain positions. It is a nice set up and you start to guess with every person he is meeting if that person belongs to his group and if yes what the spot is. Not all where clear until the end and I liked the way the Octavo grows bigger and bigger and it gets clear what other people are involved.

I loved the folding fan aspect of the story. I did see them regular on images from that period but never knew the history behind them and that they where used in the way as described in the book. I did some Google searches after reading and found a lot of extra information and nice facts.
The story is told from different perspectives. If Emil is the one writing down his story he is using I but he is also writing down the stories that where told. Usually I am easily distracted when this is used in a book but the changing points of view where carefully separated in chapters making it clear for the reader immediately that the point of view would change and it was fluent.
If you are scared of the puzzle books like the Rose Labyrinth or Angels and Demons you can actually pick up this book. It is not as heavy or complicated as those. The tone is lighter and the puzzle feeling can be ignored without losing touch with the rest of the story. ( )

Emil Larsson is a contented bachelor living the high life in 1791 Stockholm. He has risen up in the world, managing to purchase for himself the position of sekretaire in the government, and he spends his evenings drinking and gaming in Mrs. Sparrow’s parlor. But when his superior tells Emil he must marry or lose his sekretaire position, Emil is at a loss. Mrs. Sparrow, by now a friend, does a special favor for Emil…a card-based fortune-telling she calls the Octavo. This special layout is meant to define the eight people one must find in order to create the future one desires. Emil is not certain he believes in it, but he goes along with the reading and begins attempting to put together his Eight. In the process, he finds himself caught up, not in a quest for love, but in political manuevering that might end in his death if he is not careful, and King Gustav’s if he cannot prevent it.

Fast-paced, colorful, vibrant, and quite unique. The mystical aspect of fortune-telling is subdued with the emphasis on the historical context. Sure to be enjoyed by fans of well-written historical fiction. ( )

Pretty standard historical fiction. If you like that kind of thing you will probably enjoy this. I was drawn to this by the intigue surrounding the eight cards, the octavo. Unfortunately that was a rather trivial gimmick. ( )

An intriguing conceit, that one's fate is determined by the interaction of 8 people, forms the basis for this intriguing and well-executed novel of Stockholm circa 1791. The idea is well-developed and the author holds the reader's interest as the characters are revealed in their relevant places as the novel progresses.

Many interesting and complex characters are explored here, so well that the reader finds herself loving and hating them with quite a bit of fervor.

Lots of political intrigue (it is, incidentally, a story about the French Revolution from a Swedish perspective), plenty of historical details, and some surprising plot twists keep one turning the pages.

A most suprerior historical novel. ( )