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The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1)

Laurie R. King

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Apr 08, 2019 sahra added it

Shelves: dnf-2019

Yeah, that's a no go for me. This is bad. ...more

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Nov 04, 2020 Nat rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, historical-fiction

A little torn about this one. I did enjoy it... but probably not enough to pick up the second one. I think King does a good job with the tone and the narrative voice; it's very readable but still feels "old-timey". I also really enjoyed the way that WW1 is worked into the narrative. Mary is a fun narrator and I guess it's satisfying to watch her be awesome at everything, but there's only so much you can do with a character that doesn't have any flaws. Everyone just seems to love her right off th A little torn about this one. I did enjoy it... but probably not enough to pick up the second one. I think King does a good job with the tone and the narrative voice; it's very readable but still feels "old-timey". I also really enjoyed the way that WW1 is worked into the narrative. Mary is a fun narrator and I guess it's satisfying to watch her be awesome at everything, but there's only so much you can do with a character that doesn't have any flaws. Everyone just seems to love her right off the bat, and while there are some nods in the book to the misogyny of the early 1900s, Mary somehow has a ton of freedom and is never really limited in her investigations by the fact that she's a woman.

The actual plot gets a bit dull in places. There's a whole multi-chapter segue where they visit Palestine for some reason that's totally unrelated to everything else that happens. I got the feeling that King wanted to branch out and have her characters explore other places so the reader would get a feel for what the rest of the world (i.e. not just England) was like in ~1915. But she doesn't do a very good job of fitting this section in organically. The murderer is also 100% unguessable. Maybe that's sort of true to the original Holmes stories? I first read them so long ago that it's hard for me to look at them objectively, but it did seem a lot of the time that the reader couldn't have really guessed the solution. But at the same time, it's a little annoying here that (view spoiler). And all the characters are so mean to Watson all the time for no reason :(

Also: I was definitely getting some hot-for-teacher vibes at times? And looking ahead and the other books, it seems like I wasn't imagining it because they do get married. So... that's pretty weird. Mary is 17 and Holmes is like 55 and spends a lot of the book clearly acting as a sort of father figure. It makes the relationship seem uncomfortably predatory, and I don't really get why it was necessary.

It was a fun book to read, though. King is a good writer and if you put aside the Mary Sue-like aspects of her character, Mary is a fun narrator to ride along with. It was exciting and clever, and the beginning especially I thought was well done and engaging. A well-written light read in almost a cozy-mystery style, but for me the faults outweigh the strengths. ...more

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