C
Genre: Historical: European, LGBTQIA, Paranormal, Romance
Widdershins should be my absolute catnip. It features a m/m romance in a fantasy Victorian setting between a private detective and a geeky, shy philologist. One of the supporting characters is a woman who struggles to be respected as an Egyptologist in a male-dominated field. Most of the action takes place in a giant museum, and I do love a good museum! There’s a mummy, and I do love a good mummy! Alas, the plot left much to be desired, and I found myself to be strangely bored.
The book’s narrator is Percival Whyborne, the philologist (he speaks thirteen languages and reads more). One of my frustrations with the book was that I just didn’t enjoy being inside Whyborne’s head for 222 pages. Whyborne is shy and nervous, possibly to the point of having clinical anxiety. He was bullied as a child and is now bullied by other museum workers, with the exception of Dr. Christine Putnam (the Egyptologist). He is also terrified of anyone finding out that he’s gay (because being gay is considered to be both immoral and illegal), and he’s guilt-stricken by the death of a previous lover.
Whyborne becomes involved in a museum mystery when a detective, Griffin Flaherty, asks him to translate an encrypted book. Pretty soon the two of them (then usually the three of them, once Christine joins the team) are running away from a cult that has been creating monsters in an attempt to raise people from the dead.
The characters were pretty one-dimensional for most of the story. Whyborne is shy and timid. Griffin is dashing. Both of them are kind to others and easily accept Christine as a professional peer, unlike her other male coworkers and acquaintances. In the course of the book, Griffin shows vulnerability and Whyborne becomes more confident. Their romance is nice but it’s not very complex. The character development and romance development is pleasant but not compelling.
The most satisfying aspect of the book is seeing Whyborne learn to take credit for his own ingenuity and daring. For someone who claims to have no skills, he’s usually the first to figure out what’s happening and to leap into action, even if the action is not effective. By the end, he’s not only heroic but he owns his own heroism instead of being constantly self-deprecating. He doesn’t turn into a snob; he just stops putting himself down all the time.
The plot is full of mystery and action but it’s also very repetitive. Basically it cycles like this:
1. Whyborne worries that Griffin will find out about him or not love him or break up with him (what he worries about specifically depends on the book’s page number).
2. Griffin flirts with Whyborne. After a certain point in the book, replace “flirt” with “has sex with.”
3. Characters are chased by monsters. Inevitably someone yells, “RUN!”
4. Whyborne goes home or to his office and studies the book.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
This book has a fun concept but neither the characters nor the action nor the central mystery nor the romance were very captivating. It’s the first book in the series, which might explain why it spends so much time setting things up. It ends with the romance and the main plot resolved but leaves enough bad guys alive so that our heroes can spend many more books chasing them.
Full disclosure – I read this book at a time when I had a new batch of books clamoring for my attention. Perhaps this book would have fared better if it had had less competition. I wanted to love it, but it didn’t hold my interest.
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I read the first three and found them entertaining enough, but yes, repetitive. I liked the crossover with KJ Charles’s Simon Feximal.
This is super petty, but I cringed whenever Griffin pulled out his pet name for Whyborne. “Ival”? I get that it’s short for Percival, but how do you say it? Rhymes with “evil”? Not Sexy.
Thank you for saying what I thought but was too timid to say out loud. The story would work much better as a comic than a book.
I also wasn’t a fan. It was the first m/m historical I read and it has such high reviews on goodreads that I (incorrectly) concluded that I just must not like historicals.
Thanks for the review. I agree with your description of the story and perhaps this being the first book in the series does account for all the pacing issues/world/character building but I LOVE this series. I agree with Lyn that the crossover with KJ Charles’ Simon Feximal and Robert Caldwell was delightful.
It’s a good book that sets up a really sweet M/M romance about a former Pinkerton, a shy academic with a side of feisty lady egyptologist, if that’s your catnip 😉
I am actually reading the seventh book in this series right now (after reading the first six) and I enjoy them as kind of a comfortable, familiar thing to return to. But I admit I do a fair amount of skim reading for the supernatural/action scenes because they are fairly repetitive and also kind of hard to visualize sometimes. I do love the two main characters, and I have enjoyed their progressions individually and as a couple over the series. And I love that Whyborne is an awkward pill of a character.
Each book is always good for at least a couple of hot sex scenes, too.
I agree that the crossover with Simon Feximal and Robert Caldwell was fantastic.
The English-born philologist speaks thirteen languages and reads more, huh? Speaking as someone with an advanced degree in philology… well, the being able to read many more languages than you speak sounds accurate. The rest… not so much. Nope.
Re: “Ival” as a nickname for “Percival,” that’s weird all right. Nicknames that are formed by shortening a person’s given name are almost always formed from the name’s stressed syllable(s) somehow or other, and in exceptional cases, you’re still probably going to use a) entire syllables and b) some plausibly salient portion of the name. I would, I guess, accept “Cival” as a nickname, despite its being formed from the unstressed syllables, but I am very very skeptical about “Ival.”
I also wanted to like this more than I did. I’m tempted by some of the later books in the series – there’s an ff that sounds like my thing, but I haven’t been willing to read through the early books.
I liked this book. I would have put it at a B. I don’t disagree with your comments, but I enjoyed it anyway.
I really enjoy this series. Perceval is fussy and for some reason I enjoy him, maybe because I’m also a fussy academic nerd! I like Charles’ other series as well, and that may be more up peoples alleys.
Sorry! Hawk, not Charles. My brain is not working today!
Thanks for this review – putting into words what I felt about this book. I thought I would love this series but at 1 and 1/2 books in was only meh. Too many books out there to spend any more time on meh.
I DNFed this book. Everyone else seemed to like it, but I just could not get into it. Glad to know I’m not alone.
Sadly agree with your review. Fun book idea, but it was only the first draft of an engrossing story. It’s not historical (unless the characters live in Anachronism City) but it reads like a want-to-be m/m Indiana Jones or The Mummy. The characters were more types than fleshed out people. I adore good female characters in m/m, but Christine was obnoxiously Mary Sue. Also adore pet names between people falling in love, but the “Ival” thing just made me wince.
It broke my heart, really, because good m/m adventure romance isn’t easy to find and I wanted this book to work for me. It was just too slight and superficial.
I’m so glad the review said “fantasy Victorian” right at the beginning, because otherwise I’d be going bonkers trying to figure out where Christine got her doctorate. (Fun fact: When the German universities first started admitting women, they were only allowed into the sciences, preferably “hard” science. The humanities–especially, Heaven forbid, Classical literature–were simply Not Suitable For Ladies.)
But dang, this sounds like something I would want to enjoy.
Though I really enjoyed this book, I can totally see your point. However, I will always love it for the scene where Christine yells;
“I will not surrender my profession simply because men through-out history have been unduly enamored of their penises!”
I also think the description/marketing of the book is a little off, which can be a problem for any book. Hawk does write the “magical shenanigans fantasy historical” series (Hexbreaker), but this one is more “defeating the Lovecraftian horror” series.
I mean, I recognize that it’s not great, but I do really enjoy it. *sigh* I guess a C is fair.
I absolutely love this series, and I’d encourage those who found the premise interesting to give it another chance, because the writing and plotting improve by leaps and bounds with each book. Frankly, I’d say skip book 2 (or even 1, if you haven’t read it and want to try out the series.) Start with book 3. That’s where it really gets good–amazing world-building, interesting takes on mythology, flawed but lovable characters, great juxtaposition of social commentary and historical realism (magic aside.) Book 2 is definitely the weakest (LOTS of repeated actions and a super vague mystery,) and Book 1 is also a bit rough. Seriously though, if there were things you enjoyed, check out the later books because a. it improves massively, and b. it’s one of those stay-up-all-night-reading series.
Also, if (like me) you’re from (or live near) Salem, MA, have fun spotting all the references to local places. (Even though Salem exists separate from Widdershins in this world, Widdershins is clearly based on Salem, down to the museum where the main character works being a clear stand-in for the Peabody-Essex Museum.)
@Sammara: Oh I LOVE when a place is clearly based on a real location – that’s fun. And thank you for the advice about where to start! That’s so helpful to readers new to the series. Thank you!