Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Carnivale of Curiosities

Ideally, I like to give any ARC I read about 25% of its length to impress me before I either decide to DNF the book or to soldier on and see if I can complete it, despite knowing it’s going to be a slog and I’m not going to enjoy it much. Such was the dilemma I felt at the 25% mark of The Carnivale of Curiosities. I chose not to DNF it and to continue on, hoping for some sort of redemption in the rather one-dimensional characters that seemed plucked from some sort of B plot in a Six of Crows spinoff or a pick up in the plodding pace of a sagging plot.

Really, neither happened for me.

For a book that had a really great opening sentence to hook the reader, the book itself seems like a mish mash of Six of Crows, The Night Circus, movies like the Prestige and tv shows like Penny Dreadful or Carnival Row. Fantasy just on its own stands on the shoulders of giants because it’s genre fiction; in the case of historical fantasy writers need to be even more careful because they have that historical, real world ephemera that’s floating around their world building and plot too. You can’t stray too far outside the bounds of what really happened unless you want to classify your book as Alternative Earth fiction (think Steampunk or Gaslamp).

I just ended up thinking this book moved too slow, was too predictable, the characters were just not given the care and attention they should have been, and it really shouldn’t take until you’re into the second act of the book for the inciting event to happen, no matter how long the book is.

That being said, Gibbs is an excellent writer when it comes to setting a scene and when it comes to prose. I think that some better editing would have made this book shine. I hope to see more from her in the future.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. As per personal policy, this review will not be posted to any social media or bookseller website due to receiving a rating of three stars or lower.