Warwick Stubbs > Recent Status Updates

An amazingly slow book, yet quite readable. 200 pages in, the plot isn't moving (much), I feel like there's no actual mystery since I've been told who is in the lining sight for suspicion, and gardening has been mentioned all of 2 times - I keep waiting to see Justin, the gardener of the title, spending time gardening, but he's barely managed to plant a foot anywhere near a garden thus far.

Odd that the blurb focusses on Tessa's husband, Justin, and the plot of him trying to unravel the mystery of her murder, yet the viewpoint characters are Woodrow, a friend and work colleague, and occasionally Woodrow's wife, Gloria. There are definitely some secrets being hidden by this viewpoint character, that's for sure.

Chapter 6
As Basargin wrote, 'the further we moved into [Siberia], the more it gained in my eyes. The common people seemed more free, more skillful, even better educated than our Russian peasants. ... here they better appreciate human dignity.' p.210

The Surgeon of Crowthorn, a book about words, was 200 pages long; every book after by Winchester seems to balloon well past that. This book needed more editing to remove repetitive points about Smith's map and character, as well as the geological history of the world which can be found in other books - much feels like padding, because William Smith's story isn't that interesting, at least not for 300 pages!

On the home straight...

We are hurtling towards the 21st Century, and there's still 240 pages left to read...

(the rest is 100 pages of maps, family trees, bibliography, and index)

Despite the lower status of women on both sides, Usamah bin Munqidh tells of both Islamic and Crusader women who in times of peril pulled on armour and fought the enemy in battle.
- p.279 (footnote) [circa 1142]

I found this to be quite a ridiculous comparison: "Now [circa 320AD] that the Church was established, Christology became paramount, more important than life itself, for the right definition of Christ would decide whether a man would achieve salvation and enter heaven. In our secular era the debates on nuclear disarmament or global warming are the closest equivalents in their passion and intensity." (p.175)

I take issue with Montefiore's liberal use of place names and using the modern forms interchangeably. This becomes very confusing if you are not an expert on Middle East geography, especially considering a lot of these names don't appear on the first presented map (1000-586 BC). To me, it makes more sense to stick with the names as they were know then.

If this book didn't have Phillip Mann's name attached to it, I would have assumed it was written by a second rate hack. Feels like a story being told to little kids, but the sexual themes are adult. Sadly at this point it takes the rape of a female character to get the main plot and character development rolling. The previous 100 pages was mostly uninteresting world building.