Review - "The Gods of Gotham"

The Gods of Gotham, Timothy Wilde Mysteries #1
by Lyndsay Faye
rating:☆☆☆☆☆
published: 15th March 2012
spoilers? no

Goodreads

He wasn't in front of me any longer. He was a thousand and a thousand and a thousand miles away. It was a ransomed look. One he'd never before showed me. And since he'd never shown me, I'd never known it was there.

I read this book first a year ago, on someone's recommendation, and the Wilde brothers killed me then. Rereading it now, it's even worse. Because you know everything that's going to happen to them, in this book and in later books, and they're so innocent and unaware of everything that's to come.

Tim and Val Wilde are perhaps (or maybe not perhaps) my favourite brothers in all the books I've ever read. How do I even put into words how much I love them? Their relationship is one of the most painful ones I've read - it's dysfunctional and they spend most of their conversations trying to hurt each other in the first book, but they work it through, they care about each other and they protect one another so fiercely, because each is the only family the other has left. (I'm getting all emotional, sorry. I'll move on.)

Lyndsay Faye has the most gorgeous style of writing, too. It's so evocative, and that makes it so easy to imagine the setting, so you end up being subsumed into the book and before you know it, you're nearing the conclusion and you just don't want it to end. I would read everything ever that Lyndsay Faye wrote.

Even though this time round I knew roughly what was going to happen with the plot, it never took away from my enjoyment of the novel. It felt almost like I was reading it anew, and I love books like that. So what I knew who the culprit was? I didn't care. It's something that I'd assume is especially hard to pull off with mystery stories (because once you know whodunnit then you can't read the book the same way again), but Lyndsay Faye manages it.

Her characters are also wonderful, and so real. None of them are perfect and they've all their vices and they all get angry and lash out when they don't mean to, and I love that about them. They seem so human and I can understand their motivations, which happens rarely. I find a lot of the time that that seems to be the hardest thing to get right. (Most of my favourite authors have this knack, like Melina Marchetta.)

Anyway. I have rambled for long enough about how much I adore this book please read it. It's one of my favourites ever - honestly, I could reread this a million times over and never get tired.