About this title: Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 01/2001
ISBN-13:9780802733573ISBN:0802733573
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 400 p. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2002-05-28
ISBN-13:9780142000809ISBN:0142000809
Description: Good. Good reading copy showing the usual shelf and reading wear: cover rubbing, light wear to edges and corners, spine crease, etc. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2002-05-28
ISBN-13:9780142000809ISBN:0142000809
Description: Good. Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket not necessarily included minimal wear to binding, majority of pages undamaged, minimal to no highlighting/underlining of text, no missing p. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780142000809ISBN:0142000809
Description: Very Good. Very Good Condition for being gently read. Better than average used book ** Shop the most eco-conscious seller and keep the earth clean! ** read more
"I wanted to like this book more than I ultimately did. It's set in an interesting time period, and it makes good us of all kinds of cool 17th century stuff, from London Bridge to alchemy, to Galileo to the search for longitude to Elizabeth of Bohemia. The basic idea is that the narrator, Inchbold, is hired to find a missing rare book, and in doing so is plunged into an arcane political conspiracy.
And the intricate plot is very interesting, if you like that kind of thing (I do). The trouble is, there's very little characterization in this book. You get a decent sense of Inchbold, but everyone else mostly feels like stand-ins for the writer to gradually explain his conspiracy...at least in Ichbold's timeline. Everyone speaks with more or less the same voice, whether they're salty sea captains or mysterious heiresses. Their obliquely told stories all unroll at the same stately pace, paragraph after paragraph of it, even when they're being chased up ladders and through winding corridors by dagger wielding enemies.
I really enjoyed the plot, but whoever edited this book should have sent it back for another draft. It could have been much better. I wish I could give it a 3.5 for the story itself, but it's definitely not worth a 4, so I guess I have to give it a 3."
"This is a fun century- and continent-spanning literary mystery that calls upon the most atmospheric scenes from Rennaisance London, Byzantine Constantinople, and South America in the Age of Exploration. It's great if you experiece page-turning fantasy and be nerdy at the same time."
"Um. Wow. This would make a great jumping off point to delve more into the history and politics of the time. Sadly I just didn't give it justice, but I did enjoy it though I only grasped a fraction of it.
If I read this again, and I'd like to, I'll definitely make a bubble map as I read in order to keep people, places, and events sorted."
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