The Bedlam Stacks: From the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

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The history of quinine and the East India Company was fascinating, as were the stone statues which moved. A hint here - do not read this book if you dislike magical realism. There is a whole lot of fantastical stuff going on which you may not be able to swallow if you like your fiction real. This is a difficult book for me to review. In many ways it's excellent, and I enjoyed it a great deal, but I feel like I only understand its flaws and am at a loss with regards to how Pulley makes the successful parts succeed. steal a plant whose exact location nobody knows, in territory now defended by quinine barons under the protection of the government, and inhabited by tribal Indians who also hate foreigners and have killed everyone who’s got close in the last ten years.’ You could read this book that asks questions about life and faith; or you simply enjoy a lovely journey through a world that is both real and fantastical. Conflicted in almost every way. Its pace, its subject matter, its characters--all of these facets have both lots of positive points in their favor but yet almost as many strikes against them. The writing is very good; descriptive without being exhausting, beautiful without turning purple. I enjoyed the writing on its own very much. But the story.

He protested that his leg wasn’t up to the trip; he suspected – correctly – that there was more to the trip than he was being told; he knew that others had tried do the same thing and lost their lives in the process; but he was intrigued and he remembered that his father had told him stories about his own travels to that part of the world, and hinted that there were more stories that he couldn’t tell. The relationships in the book are very...unsatisfying. Nothing comes of much of them, or they're handled almost superficially. I'm all for slow burns but not if they fizzle into nothing, not if you build up a sort of almost super-human devotion and allow it to go absolutely nowhere. I was smitten when I read Natasha Pulley’s first book, ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street’ a year or two ago, and so when I saw that a second book was being sent out into the world I knew that I had to rush out and buy a copy.

The cover alone made me desperate to get hold of this book, not to mention the description. Exploding trees? Strange events in Peru? Sign me up now, please! Definitely recommended for anyone to whom a queer platonic historical fantasy set in Peru sounds interesting. :) I will likely read this and Watchmaker again before Pulley's next book comes out. I received an ARC of this novel from Bloomsbury Publishing in exchange for an honest review – all thoughts are my own. I can’t really review this book without keeping the The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley’s debut, in mind and I apologies in advance for multiple comparisons between both books which I will be making.I must say that in terms of imaginative concepts and world building I thoroughly did like this book, if a bit overcrowded at times. The Marqayuk' was whispered by the gardeners whenever the fog passed in the distance as they worked in the greenhouses. Tools of the enemy state. The eagerly anticipated new novel from the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - a treacherous quest in the magical landscape of nineteenth-century Peru.