Jessica Cornwell - The Serpent Papers

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Could have been much better

I tried this book because of good reviews and because it seemed to promise genuine intellectual content, given the historical and alchemical background. It has very good things about it, but ultimately it wasn't well enough done and I found the whole thing a bit of a slog.

The story is a good idea: a researcher into arcane alchemical and mystical books and documents becomes drawn into an old investigation of serial killings in Barcelona, and also into the hunt for an ancient manuscript, both of which place her in danger and which, inevitably, are related. Jessica Cornwell plainly knows a lot about alchemy, its language, symbolism and its history and puts this across well. She also captures very well the passion and deep connection with books of her central character, who narrates much of the story, and generates a good sense of place in Barcelona. It could have been a great read, but I'm afraid the execution wasn't really good enough.

The story has a lot of threads and we jump between times and narrative voices. This can be very effective but here it all became very jumbled for me so that I spent so much attention on remembering where we were, when this bit was set and who the people were that I struggled to keep up with the plot. Even this would have been manageable, but the style also let it down rather. The protagonist has a narrative voice which is permanently at fever pitch, and it gets very wearing. Even routine work is presented as though it were high emotion. Just as a small example, a police officer is trying to determine how a criminal got access to the scene of the crime. We get this:

"He makes a call to his officers. They check the entry point. Sure enough, the lock of the metal chain that stretches across the turnout has been cut.

The bolt hacked through.

When Fabregat holds the cut metal in his hands, he runs his eyes over the surrounding apartments."

That level of emphasis on the simple, unimportant fact that a bolt has been hacked through by giving it a paragraph to itself simply dims the effect in other places when emphasis is really needed, and having everything - vital or trivial - presented at that pitch made this very hard going for me.

Similarly, there are some awkwardnesses and solecisms in the prose. "Sweat malingered," for example, or "I must bear this lodestone." (She just means "load," nothing to do with magnetized rock.) Correspondence dated 1851 contains enough small anachronistic usages (like "he's a career explorer," or "you're half way there" meaning "you have partially solved it") for it just not to ring quite true, and so on.

Perhaps I am being too picky, but style and context are very important in creating a story, and this one could have done with some firm editorial input. Others have enjoyed this book, and there is a good deal to enjoy so do read other reviews before letting me put you off, but for me this was only so-so. A shame - it could have been much better.