Monday, March 2, 2015

Review and Blog Tour: The Dickens Mirror (Dark Passages #2) by Ilsa J. Bick AND Giveway!

I'm very happy to be a part of the Last List Blog Hop to help out some authors who have recently had their publishing house close its doors.  One of those authors is one that I've been a fan of since the first book in her Ashes trilogy.  My spot on the tour is just supposed to be a review of the sequel to her book White Spaces.  However, I haven't quite finished it yet.  When I got my day to post, it just didn't quite fit in with the other books I had on schedule to review, and I even stopped reading one of those books.  Now, the reason for this, these books are big!  And they should be.  It's just that they are very detailed stories, with so much world building and character building, that you can't just zoom through them like you can with other stories at times.  So in order to keep on time with my post for the blog hop, I'm going to do a halfway through review as part one today, and then when I finish the book, I'll do a quick part two review, later this week, Thursday or Friday probably.  If you haven't read the first one, then you should probably read my review of it HERE.  Then skip over my short review below, and jump to the giveaway at the end!

Halfway-through review:

This time it's as if all our characters from the first book have kind of ended back up in one of their other "Nows".  Even Emma has gone back to a different time from where she had been.  She's back to where she was only 12 years old and had an accident on her bike.  Only when she gets home, and no one is there to help her out, all of a sudden a woman with the Panop glasses shows up.  Climbs through her window and comes after her.  And it's not just that which is weird, it's also that she's remembering things that Lizzie said to them. About how they are part of a story.  And so then things seem to not be real until she imagines them. And it's not just her, it is other characters. They are dreaming of times and places that only become more real as they think what should be there.  The "Now" that the characters are either already in, or that they may end up in, is back in what is a pretty alternate London.  One where a Peculiar fog has taken over, and a type of disease eats away at people.  The time where Elizabeth/Lizzie is in a mental hospital.  The time when there is a man named  Arthur Conan Doyle.  And while people here are looking for a Dickens Mirror, they don't know of anyone named Charles Dickens.  Many of the characters here remember dying in the other "Now".  But think it is just a dream. Even though their friends were there in some way.

So far the science has not been as intense as in the other book.  But there was some really good stuff at the beginning.  Like, this one fact that just really stood out to me.  Now, I only know about Schrodinger's Cat because of The Big Bang Theory.  But a true fact the author shared in the book is that Einstein didn't agree or believe in that theory!  I wonder what my favorite nerd Sheldon would have to say about that.  I love the nerdy science stuff!

If you enjoyed the first, you'll enjoy this one, although it is taking place in a much different time period. While the first book kind of jumped around to several different places, for the most part it stayed in more current times.  This one began at some present day parts, but for the most part we're in that alternate London.  I'm halfway through, but definitely wondering who the woman who climbed through Emma's window is, and in another now she climbed through a mirror, how?  I also want to know just who the Kramer/doctor is, and why Doyle is playing such a big part.  Is he really supposed to be the author?  Or what?

And, without further ado, here is the

Giveaway:

  a Rafflecopter giveaway