Review (Part 2): The Dickens Mirror (Dark Passages #2) by Ilsa J. Bick

First I will thank Netgalley and Egmont USA for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  I'm very happy that this e-galley was much easier to read than the e-galley for the first book, White Spaces, was.  I ended up waiting several months, almost a year actually to finish reading the first one because of how difficult it was to read in the e-galley format.  I'm going to also say that it was probably good that I read them both so close together.  These books are very, dense you might say. The story is very intricate and it isn't one you can skim.  It was kind of hard to try to read while my dog was being a pain in the butt as well.  But once I was able to just zone out the rest of the world and read, I was sucked in.  I did a PART ONE of this review on Tuesday to be part of a Blog Hop tour to support the author now that Egmont USA has shut its doors.  So this will be a quicker review of how it ended up without spoilers for the most part, along with mostly my overall opinion of the book.

If you read my first part, you know that I said most of the story took place back in an alternate London, and that there wasn't as much of the physics as there had been in the last part of the first book.  However this changed.  We still spent most of this story in that alternate London, but now the science stuff really started back in.  As more of the characters from the first book got brought to this "Now" by the woman wearing the panops, Emma, who was now inside the Elizabeth, or her older self was in this Elizabeth, Emma starts seeing the physics theories and facts she was catching onto in the first book.  We learn who this strange woman is, and it is a bit of a surprise. There are characters in this book that are what you'd think of as bit players or extras in a movie.  But in the book/story they are formless/faceless at some points.  Placeholders basically as they aren't important to what the author is trying to say.  We learn more about Lizzie's family, her father, mother, and just what they each did for the stories and peculiars as they are in the real world.  But the book definitely makes you wonder which reality is real, who are the real people, which ones are just characters in the book, and what are you reading about?  It makes you even wonder if maybe your whole life is just a book that someone is reading.

I was a bit confused in some parts, but then I wonder if it is just that the way the author wrote it, I was confused because it wasn't supposed to either be clear to all the characters, or if she wrote it in a way to make it more suspenseful and I did really understand it.

Now, originally I know I saw somewhere that this was supposed to be a trilogy.  So what I'm wondering, because of how the ending was in a way wrapping some bits up, or at least kind of circling around to parts from the beginning, will there be a 3rd part?  Or was this completed in the way it was because there may not be one now that the publishing house is closing?  I can definitely be okay with where the story ended.  But I also feel there are things that could be finished being explained and further fleshed out. And I would be willing to read another book, even as long as these are!

Now, if you think you want to read these, you can enter the giveaway below for an ARC of the first book.

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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

Review (sort of): White Space (Dark Passages #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Egmont USA Publishing for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  Second, the reason I am calling this "sort of" a review is because I haven't actually finished the book yet.  I've only made it a little over halfway through the 560 pages.  The problem is I was having so much trouble reading the format of the e-galley that I decided to just review how I liked the book so far, and wait to finish it with an actual copy of the book when I could really get into it.  The print in the e-galley was so small, and the only way to make it bigger was to use my hand and kind of swipe it bigger.  But then when I went to turn the page, it went back to the small size again, and I would have to re-enlarge it.  And, if I didn't make it smaller before I turned the page, then it took a long time to go to the next page as well as being smaller.  So I kept being interrupted every time I tried to go on to the next page, and there were some really intense moments that I didn't want to be interrupted as I needed to know what was happening next, and quickly!

I would compare this story to what I imagine H.P. Lovecraft stories are like.  I've not read any, I don't think, but it seems like the monsters remind me of the images you see of "Lovecraftian" monsters.  And it definitely reminds me of a Stephen King novel, one of his really dark ones, like It, one of my favorites.  I do really prefer to kind of know sometimes ahead of times what is going on, and in a way, you're kind of finding your way along the story with the characters, but it is done in a really good way.  It is a totally different kind of story than the author's first series, The Ashes Trilogy, but I loved that, and so far I'm pretty intrigued by this story as well.

The characters are all flawed it seems, they have something to hide, something about them that could change the way the people they are meeting would feel about being around them.  And while we kind of know with some of them, you slowly learn more as the story goes on. There are two characters, soldiers, that I kind of figured out a little of their back story before it really began to unfold, but I'm not saying that in a bad way, I was just thinking it was what it was going to be, and then it was!

I definitely recommend this book, but as it is over 500 pages, same as the first trilogy, you have to be ready to pick it up and just get sucked in, and just go with it.  I can't wait till it comes out, probably enough that I will have to go ahead and buy it right away so that I can finish reading it.  But we'll see how broke I am this week.