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The Nicholas Feast (2007)

The Nicholas Feast (2007)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
3.86 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0786719974 (ISBN13: 9780786719976)
Language
English
Publisher
carroll & graf

About book The Nicholas Feast (2007)

Once again, I found myself stumbling along with the dialect in the beginning, but as with the Harper's Quine, I reached the point where the context and my enjoyment of the storyline and characters let me find my way. (To this end, I still think the e-book version is one of the better choices for this story, simply for the online dictionary. Not all the words and phrases were available, but with wi-fi, you have the option of looking them up at whim.) This story picks up not long after the fist book ended. To my delight, my favorite characters from the first book, including our mysterious Harper, Alys, and her father, are all a part of this story, blended nicely with some new characters I hope to see more of in later installments. I will say that I got tangled up in the very large cast of characters, and there were some times I just plowed on with some names in a muddle, figuring, and rightly so, that it would all come out in the wash. This series has rekindled my delight in historical mystery. Now, I find myself wondering if I missed more subtle historical references in the fist book. I had to chuckle at the reference to and opinion of what had to be on Columbus's attempt to find a trade route to the West Indies-even though Columbus was not named per se. It was a nice touch.

This is the second in a series, but that is not why I didn't give it a great rating.Set in 1400 or so Scotland, the story takes place at a university. This means there will be a lot of students / characters involved in and around the storyline.For me personally, I found that there were too many characters. I became very confused in the first quarter of the book. Still, after keeping at the book for a couple of weeks and getting into the meat of the story, I liked it and finished it.Some of the characterizations were terrific, particularly William, Jaikie and Lord Montgomery. And Gil was an interesting sleuth and the author portrays him with a lot of depth.That all being said, I'm not a big mystery lover, so I don't know if I will go on to read others in this series.I recommend Sister Fidelma (an Irish nun in the 9th century) and Brother Cadfael.

Do You like book The Nicholas Feast (2007)?

Set in Glasgow in the last 1400s Gil Cunningham is again called upon to solve a murder case. While attending a processing at the University of Glasgow celebrating the Feast of Nicholas Gil is reunited with friends and teachers from his early scholastic training. He notices a young man named William who superior attitude engendered irritation and anger. William was later found strangled. Gil was asked by the university’s master. I must be getting better at reading Scottish dialect for this installment went faster.
—Cheryl

This was ok, but didn't engage me like the first book did. It seemed perhaps somewhat hastily put together; there were references that were not clear, characters not fully introduced - the harper and his sister from the last book were there but if I hadn't read the first book I wouldn't really know who they were or why they were there. There didn't seem any overwhelming reason for them to be there, they just sort of wandered through. I don't want to give the impression it was awful, I still enjoyed it, but I kind of felt like something was missing. Will definitely read the next one.
—Diana Sandberg

I could more or less copy my review for the first in the series here. The mystery plot was good (and actually less predictable than the first) and the author is really good at writing historical novels that make you feel that this book can only be set at this time in this place because plot and the 'background' are so intertwined with each other. The author is also really good at giving just enough information in dialogue and narration that also readers who are somewhat unfamiliar with 15th century Scotland know what's going on, without massive infodumps. However it's still only just enough, I can guess sort of what happened and how the Scottish legal system at this time worked but an afterword where the author explains a bit more would have been awesome.I still love the relationship between Gil and Alys. At first it was instant attraction but not love and now you can see it developing into something more. They stil learn new things about each other and discover similarities (and I might have gone 'awwwwwwwwwwww' at one point) and these parts are really beautifully written.
—Aoife

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