Where Warlock Holmes Gets a Backstory

The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles by G.S. Denning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is pretty good. I didn't really enjoy the first book in the series as much as I hoped to, and almost didn't read this one. Looking back, I see I gave the first book 4 stars, and I'm a little surprised; I remember it more in the 3 range. I graded easier back then, I guess. But this one is better, more fun beginning to end, more like what I hoped the series would be, and I might get on with the next book a little quicker. (5 years between books 1 and 2.)

It's an odd mashup--Sherlock Holmes with comic fantasy. I'm down for it, actually, and I have a pretty wide range of things I'll accept and try to enjoy, but the first one didn't work for me through most of it. It made suspension of disbelief really hard, in the same way that you see The Flintstones and think that's not possible; a dinosaur would never do that. (Maybe that's just me.) It strayed too far from fantasy and broad comedy into just spoof, the kind of book where the author and the reader shake hands and say, "Isn't this completely ridiculous?" That stretches my interest too thin, right to the breaking point.

This book, based on the Hound of the Baskervilles, dances close to that point early on, but then settles in for something I like better--a weird, fantasy version of Sherlock. It is pretty silly in parts (a race on tricycles, for example, that is almost more than I can bear) but keeps close enough to fantasy conventions pretty much everywhere else that I don't have to toss it in frustration. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This book is intentionally a spoof, I suppose, and I understand that now, though it is farther along the spectrum than I thought before buying the first two books. It's kinda like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which also blends fantasy and elements of the ridiculous with a strait-laced property. That book took itself more seriously than this one, though, or so it seemed to me, and I liked it better for that.

I wander. In sum, this is not precisely my thing, especially in parts, but I liked reading it, and I feel like it's a better example of--[waves hands]--whatever it is than the first book in the series. YMMV.

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