About book Factotum (Monster Blood Tattoo, #3) (2011)
. . . by Mervyn Peake out of China Miéville with the ghost of their common ancestor, Charles Dickens, hovering above. This book, the third of a series, happened to fall into my hands and I started it with interest.Like Peake, Corliss is a visual artist and the book carries about thirty accomplished pictures of his characters. The world is reminscent of Miéville's New Crobazon (but perhaps with southern Australia rather than London as the referent)—a pseudo-Victorian civilisation haunted by monsters, pervaded by quasi-technological magic, and paranoid about creatures that can pass as human.The eponymous Factotum, a young man placed into the service of a major monster-hunter, is one such, gradually growing in awareness of his true nature and his powers. His employer is a striking woman who wins his loyalty and perhaps something more, making for a potentially compelling conflict that was perhaps too readily defused. She, like most of the characters, human, partly human or neither, is nicely sketched.The book held me for some time. And yet . . . Maybe I just got out of the mood. Perhaps it was my coming in after the second act; perhaps the action really is a little random and low in emotional intensity. Or it might be Corliss's prose—with its elaborate syntax, its ornate vocabulary (much which seems to be synthetic) and its tendency to luxuriate in description at every opportunity, so that, for instance, upon entrance almost every character is given a paragraph detailing their dress. The style certainly contributes to a feeling of immersion on Corliss's world, but by halfway I found it beginning to wear and create a fog betwen me and what was happening. Two and a half stars (YMMV). Loved it ... loved the series. Shows how you can write in almost another language, but if the words are descriptive enough in them selves, you kow what is being said. There was a glossary at the back, but never referred to it, as could work out what the words related to ... you got a picture in you mind just from the sound of the word.A very descriptive book ... where at some times I wanted a bit more action, but it kept with the style. Hopefully there is another one in the series.
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