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Originally Posted by Sparrow
It didn't really grab me. I was a bit put off at the start by the chopping of the narrative - starting out on a cruise liner, then hopping back in time, then hopping again and again.
Also the author's repeated use of 'teases' were a bit tiresome (e.g. what was going to be the the Eiffel Tower for Chicago, what Prendergast was up to, not being told Millet was on the Titanic).
And Holmes didn't really become a three-dimensional figure for me.
There were some interesting facts and anecdotes; but it left me with the feeling that, as a whole, it didn't achieve what Larson had hoped for when he started his project.
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I suspect that Larson achieved exactly what he intended. He is, after all, a professional writer looking for sales, not a history professor looking for tenure. He did a skillful job of writing a readable novel-like book interesting to a wide audience. If he had written only about the fair, or only about Holmes, he would have had to go into more depth to write a book of the same length. He may have thought this was more than his intended audience wanted.
I would have preferred more about the architects. I could have done without Holmes. I don’t think psychopaths are very interesting. They’re defined by what’s missing. There’s less to them than to other people. That may be why Holmes doesn’t seem three-dimensional. The real-life Holmes might not seem three-dimensional.