In just under a week I have managed to finish my next lucky dip pick, The Amber Shadows. This was a random buy from the supermarket and the synopsis sounded interesting enough for me to pick it up. I hoped that this would prove to be an thrilling read full of mystery, espionage and a world wind romance. Sadly, this was not the case.
I found that I had a very love hate relationship with this book, as the plot was just enough to keep me reading to the end but the writing itself jumped around too much and was really clunky.
So the plot… The book follows Honey, a typist at Bletchley Park who one evening receives a mysterious package containing a small Amber panel. She receives more of these within a few days and finally sets out to find out where they come from. Now this sounds like an interesting plot, but what follows is actually a far cry from what you expect. She is delivered the first by a guy called Felix Plaidstowe, who appears more frequently throughout the novel, and actually manages to seduce Honey despite having the personality or depth of character of a paper plate. Anyway, Honey first thinks they are coming from her father who we are led to believe escaped to Russia just before she was born, and is smuggling the Amber panels out of the Amber Room and sending them to Honey. She hears that her fantastical idea of who her father is, is far from the truth and runs off to demand the real identity of her father from her mother. The ending is also a bit of a letdown. I don’t want to tell you how it ends but the origin of the Amber was disappointing. I felt that so much effort was put into making Bletchley Park feel real and giving life to what the lifestyle was like that very little effort was put into the journey, how we got there and how it ended.
As I said before the writing was clunky, and I found that I was told far more than I wanted to know. It also jumped between third and First person quite frequently and went of on a tangent whenever Honey had a thought, which meant you would then get a stream of consciousness from Honey, which again was far more than I was actually interested in. There also were memories thrown in at what seemed the most random points, which made it quite jarring to read.
Overall, I gave the book 3 stars, as it was obviously interesting enough to get me to read it in less than a week. I wouldn’t say I was hooked but I was definitely intrigued to get to the end and discover where the Amber was coming from.
So I have made my next picks, from both my ‘to read’ and ‘classic’ mug. As you can see, I picked out the Shrinking Man from my to read jar. This is by Richard Matheson, who wrote I Am Legend (a fantastic read). I also picked North and South for my classic. I am extremely pleased with both of these, but have decided to wait on either and read a book I have had for ages, borrowed from a colleague, called Fishbowl. Until next time…
Mountains to climb 