Rating: WARTY!
Even Tim Curry's excellent voice could not save this novel. I couldn't stand to listen to the entire thing. I tend to be a lot less picky in my choices of audio books than ever I am when picking print or ebooks, because they're more throw-away to me - I am trapped in the car an hour a day so it's nice to have something to listen to even if it's not really that appealing.
A note on choosing your novel's title! Goodreads lists two pages of titles that are the same as this or are close variations on it. That's not a good thing if you want to get your novel noticed - and especially if you don't have Big Publishing&Trade; owning your work and ostensibly promoting it. It's worth thinking seriously about your title.
This audio book, read beautifully for once by an actor (Tim Curry), is historical fiction set in England at the end of the eighteenth century when England and France were not technically at war, but close enough. I had a hard time getting into it when I first began, largely I think, because I wasn't the only person in the car. The next morning, driving to work in the dark alone, it sounded a lot better to me.
1795 was a happening year for the French. They invaded the Netherlands, got a new king (Louis 18th - although it took a while to make it official), signed peace treaties with Spain and Prussia, recaptured St. Lucia, had Austria, Britain, and Russia sign a pact against them, and had a royalist rebellion crushed by young artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the fictional world, Jonathan Absey works for the Home Office and is tasked with exposing French spies. He has two problems in addition to this one. First of all, his young daughter was murdered and the crime remains unsolved, thus he visits Bow street, home of the renowned Bow Street Runners, to pursue crimes related to redheads and discovers that there has been a new one of which he wasn't notified. This is annoying to him, to say the very least, and his obsession causes serious problems for him at work.
His other problem is his homosexual half brother, Alexander. Jonathan is disgusted with this brother but nonetheless has to recruit him. His brother is an amateur astronomer, and is Jonathan's only realistic means of infiltrating an international society of astronomers, the Company of Titius
This "company" is purportedly dedicated to finding the planet that's theorized to lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but Jonathan thinks it might be a haven for spies. Johann Daniel Titius, after whom this company is named, was a German astronomer who suggested there should be a planet at that location based on what is now known as the Titius-Bode law (not related to Jude Law!). The book blurb mistakenly claims they're looking for a long-lost star, which just goes to show how much Big Publishing&Trade cares about your novel Ms Redfern. Self publishing - it's the only way to be sure!
The problem was that after a good start, the book slowly descended into a boring rambling work which quickly lost my interest. There was not enough happening, and what did happen took forever before it got going. In the end I did not finish this and I cannot honestly recommend it based on what I listened to.
