A Sabedoria dos Mortos by Rodolfo Martinez

A Sabedoria dos Mortos [The Wisdom of the Dead]
This book is only available in Spanish [Sherlock Holmes y la sabeduria de los muertos], in French [La sagesse des morts] and in Portuguese .

This a collection of three stories, pretending to be new, unpublished adventures of Sherlock Holmes, that never saw the light of day because of their uncanniness. The author proposes that these have been written by John Watson, M.D. (not Arthur Conan Doyle – but there is an explanation for that), and that his job as been merely of translating the texts found on box in an antique shop in Soho.

The first story, and longest, gives the title to the book. It's “Sherlock Holmes meets Lovecraft”. And Lovecraft does make an appearance in the story, although it's not H.P. Lovecraft, but his father. But it's safe to say that what made Lovecraft Lovecraft is hinted at this story.

It was a nice, long story, that kept me on my toes while reading. Of course there where things that irked me, I kind of wished it was less Lovecraftian and more Holmesian, in the sense that I prefered a better, more satisfying ending to the story. Still, it was worth reading and it's always fun to see Sherlock Holmes on different situations.

The second story [Desde a terra mais além do bosque – From the land a bit further from the woods], my favourite, can be best defined as Sherlock Holmes meets Dracula. And how cool is that? We have, side by side, Sherlock Holmes and Van Helsing investigating and fighting vampire things.

Maybe because I have read Dracula and liked (whereas with Lovecraft my knowledge is limited) I liked this one more. I felt there was more purpose to it, and the fact that is written by two points of view, of John Watson and of John Seward, certainly helped a lot.

A Aventura do assassino fingido – The Adventure of the fake assassin
This third story is the most normal one – nothing really paranormal about it. A simple mystery, in which Holmes keeps his distance, as he has retired from his investigating pursuits. It falls on Watson to find who the culprit is, with the sole help of Sherlock letters.

This one was ordinary. That's the best world I can find to describe it. Nothing paranormal, nothing mindblowing. Just a regular Holmes-kind-of-story.


Overall it was a nice book, it makes me wish I read more of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. While I was reading I had some trouble in believing that John Watson could have written these stories. Not because he is a fictional character, but because it showed that the author of this story didn't have English as native language. Part of these objections where put to rest on the Translator's Note at the end of the book, but still I am unconvinced (especially having spend the entire book with those objections).

(4/5)

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The City & The City by China Miéville

The City & The City by China Miéville
The City & The City is the big winner this year, taking all the awards (not all, but the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo, the Locus and the Arthur C. Clarke, among others). And even if I didn’t find it mindblowing, I have to agree that all of these are well deserved.

But although these awards scream Fantasy and Science Fiction, in its essence The City & The City is detective fiction, a murder mystery with some stokes of dystopia. The main character, Tyador Borlú, a detective in the Besź police, is faced with the murder of a young woman, who no one knows the name, no one knows who she is, and who no one is missing. The investigation of this murder will reveal that there is more than it seems, will upset rebel and political groups, and will take Borlú across the most peculiar of borders.

The City & The City was a different book, one that I liked immensely. More than the characters and the story, I liked the cities, the wordbuilding, that was complex and believable, without losing its magic. It was a place I wish I could visit, especially because there is a complexity in geography that, were it to exist, would be amazing to experience.

I did like the story, and had trouble putting the book down. There was much that was about the crime itself, but there was also space for explaining the culture of the cities, and their common history (even if I wished there was a bit more about the Precursor Era). But I must confess there was some predictability on the plot. By the middle of the book I already knew which was going to be Borlú's fate, even if I didn't have a clue about who was the murderer.

Another thing that I liked about The City & The City was the dystopia side of it, a dystopia that is not that much political, but more cultural, made of bogeymen and fear.

But there were things that I didn't like about this book. One of them was the writing style. I'm not sure why, I had no problem in Perdido Street Station, but here I kept finding it hard to follow. The other thing isn't so much a dislike, but something that dampened my enjoyment of the book, and it was the fact that I felt distant from the characters. They were good characters, but the story was something that was happening far away from me, I wasn't there with them.

I enjoyed reading The City & The City, and if another book is written in this universe, I'll definitely read it.

(4/5)

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