Joe Maggs's Reviews > The Ghost Ship

This was surprisingly poor from Mosse. I had said beforehand how I was looking forward to reading Follett and Mosse back-to-back to compare and contrast two different authors of historical fiction. What I didn’t expect was for there to be such a contrast!

Unfortunately, I just found there to be a massive lack of effective character development and thought that the relationships between characters, in particular the two principal characters, was super lacking. The depiction of events of high importance was lacklustre and underwhelming, and certain plot events just “appear” with little explanation, leading to a poor fit. Moreover, Mosse fails to set a lot of the scenery, a key part of ensuring immersion in historical fiction.

Overall, I found the plot jagged, random and lacking in cohesion, let down by poor characterisation. It was saved by good prose and enough of a decent plot to maintain my interest, perhaps supported by the fact that I enjoyed the first two books in this series enough to give the whole thing a proper go.