26. The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman (1985) 207 p.
I like young adult fiction a lot. It’s a guilty pleasure. Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines series are probably my favourite books of all time, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is also awesome. So I expected this earlier work of his to be quite good. It’s the average mystery/adventure novel featuring a young protagonist and the shennanigans she gets up to in “the murky streets and opium dens” of Old London after her father’s untimely death in the South China Sea.
While Pullman captures the (exaggerated) spirit of Victorian England quite well – with its grimy streets, Cockney urchins, fetid river slop and so forth – the story itself is unfortunately pretty mundane. Not precisely unputdownable. I suppose he was a much younger man when he wrote this, and was still learning the craft. Oh well. Marginal thumbs down.
Books: 26/50
Pages: 7782
Grub Street 
4 comments
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May 25, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Nao
Yeah, it’s not such a good book. Don’t worry, the 3 others are much better. Especially the 2nd one.
Any plans to finish your Riverworld readings? I recently finished the Magic Labyrinth and would be curious to know your opinion on it ;)
May 25, 2008 at 7:07 pm
grubstreethack
I’m deliberately putting off reading the Magic Labyrinth because I utterly hated the last book. Riverworld is a great idea, but it was horribly executed. I’ll get around to it eventually, though.
May 26, 2008 at 1:19 am
chris
right after you finish a story you started… oh say i dont know IN 2000 and FUCKING 5
June 5, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Nao
Hi,
Magic Labyrinth is a strange thing. It starts off really boring and annoying, still insisting on telling you the outcome of the Sam Clemens story. Lots of people die (read: the most interesting people die, and a few others added in the mix). It’s really frustrating to go through the first two thirds of the book and realizing the author wasted so much time for THAT.
Anyway, after the riverboat stories, the book goes on to show the final expedition to the Tower, and then it really grows on you. It reminds you of the good old times (i.e. the first book). There’s still a (new) annoying character, but she’s not much around so it’s okay.
Interestingly, I stopped reading the saga after that book. The end was very satisfying, and I quickly glanced through the fifth book and gathered enough data to conclude that it is not a mandatory reading — it’s just a new substory within the actual story. The end of the 5th book is pretty much the same as in the 4th. I know I’ll read it, but I’ll do it only when I miss reading some Riverworld stuff. I really had a great time with the saga, in spite of all its useless substories. It’s a great setting/universe and a fascinating plot about redemption. And I just loved reading about these famous characters from different eras meeting each other.
As I like saying, it’s one of those books you’re not sure you enjoy reading (even though you do, most of the time), but you’re really glad knowing you’ve read them, because it makes you feel a bit smarter.