Nicholas Karpuk's Reviews > The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

I don't think it's really this writer's fault, but these are the kinds of books that stop me from reading more.

Even though I have a whole category on here for books I give up on, I still feel bad about it, mostly for books that have plenty of good things going on, but are just a slog to read. And since I feel bad about it, I don't immediately admit it to myself and keep trying, which stops me from reading books that I would probably burn through in a few days.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is one such book. The prose is lovely, I like the characters, but it feels like they aren't doing much. I always wish the stakes were lower, because I find their attempt to return a strange artifact to be oddly out of step with the lives of these characters and the tone of the writing. It doesn't seem like it's the sort of plot contrivance the characters are all that excited about, nor the writer. I don't think these characters are well suited to Da Vinci Code shenanigan's, and I don't particularly find myself wanting to know the what happens.

I can't even really dissuade someone from wanting to read this book, after all, I read half of it, but once the promise of where this story was headed was fully revealed, I lost all motivation to continue.