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Loading... Ex-Libris (1998)by Ross King
I really wanted to like this one. There were lots of individual details that were nice to stumble into, but somehow the end results didn't blend into a tale that captured my attention. It seemed like it would have all the right ingredients: English history, mystery, books, but it didn't work for me.  bookczuk | Dec 8, 2011 |  A Mr Potato Head Historical Novel: Remember that toy, Mr Potato Head? It consisted of various plastic ears, noses, and hats that you could pin onto a potato to turn it into Mr Potato Head. Children loved it, but to adults it was only a potato with plastic trimmings. Just so with Ross King's dreadful Ex Libris. Although it is crammed with recondite allusions to hermetic philosophy, the Thirty Years War, colonial malfeasance, and Restoration-era intrigue, they nothing more than gratuitous add-ons. When you see through the rather heavy-handed "historical" material, what you have here is a total potato: starchy, bland, and shapeless. Ross's work has been compared to that of Ian Pears, Lawrence Norfolk, and Charles Palliser and the comparisons are totally invidious. The above named are terrific authors whose works are immersed in, and engage with, history. Ross's work is less an historical fiction than a wretched pastiche of others' historical fictions. It is woodenly written; the characters are flat; and the pacing is as limp and flaccid as a week old lettuce. It was a struggle to finish. Read Instance of the Fingerpost instead . . . 1  lonepalm | Dec 8, 2011 | I was rather disappointed by this book. A historic mystery involving a library, a mysterious woman, a swashbuckling adventurer, espionage, and secret books—how could you go wrong? Ross King manages to, though. An unexpectedly somber ending seemed totally inappropriate for the amusing, sometimes comic, story that precedes. The convoluted resolution, including the destinies of some key characters, was abruptly and unsatisfyingly explained to us like a history lesson in the final few pages. By the end, I was quite confused, but that was okay because I just didn't care. (  ) Logophile | Nov 13, 2011 | Ex Libris opens in the year 1660 with the character of Isaac Inchbold, widower and proprietor of Nonesuch Books located upon London Bridge. Isaac Inchbold, an agoraphobic London bookseller, is happily going about his sheltered existence when he receives a mysterious letter from an even more mysterious Lady Marchamont. Upon his summons to Pontifex Hall Inchbold learns that Lady Marchamont wishes him to begin a search for the manuscript The Labyrinth of the World. Inchbold surprises himself by accepting the Lady's commission and embarks on an adventure full of assassins, crypts, political intrigue, and secret codes. (  ) EJStevens | Dec 28, 2010 | Slow and difficult read, despite the subject that should be mesmerizing - BOOKS! But drowned in so much detailed historical politics of it's day, the plot was hard to keep track of, impossible to tell at times who the good guys are vs. bad. Even the second main character, Alethea, by the end of the story, was still a mystery. I think she is suppossed to be heroic cultural defender, but the fact that she made Inchbold jump through misleading hoops throughout the entire story, just left her antigonistic, without clearly explaining why what she did was necessary. I just felt like his entire narrative was a wild goose chase with the object remaining almost as much a mystery in the end, as it was in the beginning. While the writing was very evocative - I could feel how it was to live in that day and age - it made me go to the dictionary a little too often, and left me completely baffled as to all the various political and religous factions, even though I was pretty familiar with the history of that era (having read all of Dumas, Verne, some Stenhal and Hugo). Would not recommend the book nor would ever reread it. ( )1 daddyofattyo | Jun 12, 2010 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0142000809, Paperback)A cryptic summons to a remote country house launches Isaac Inchbold, a London bookseller and antiquarian, on an odyssey through seventeenth-century Europe. Charged with the task of restoring a magnificent library destroyed by the war, Inchbold moves between Prague and the Tower Bridge in London, his fortunes—and his life—hanging on his ability to recover a missing manuscript. Yet the lost volume is not what it seems, and his search is part of a treacherous game of underworld spies and smugglers, ciphers, and forgeries. Inchbold's adventure is compelling from beginning to end as Ross King vividly recreates the turmoil of Europe in the seventeenth century—the sacks of great cities; Raleigh's final voyage; the quest for occult knowledge; and a watery escape from three mysterious horsemen. A Book Sense 76 pick (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:48:37 -0500) Hired to restore a once-magnificent library that had been ravaged during the English Civil War, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold becomes embroiled in the search for a missing manuscript and a conspiracy of spies, smugglers, and forgery. |
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