Lyden Orbase reviewed Sweeney Todd by Robert Mack
Slow-paced
3 stars
Originally titled "The String of Pearls" and first published as a serial in 1846-7. I can see how this story would have worked as a serial, how people would get drawn into it as a detective suspense story especially if it was only printed like a chapter at a time in a weekly material. However, presented as a novel, it is slow-paced and can be a little frustrating to wade through all the excess verbiage. Though the over-elaborative narration can be considered the writing style of the era, I still find it too "flowery" with a strange way of beating around the bush in almost every sentence written. Several paragraphs could even be easily condensed down to a single sentence or two. It took reading half the book to get interesting.
There's also a writing style that spoke to readers in a way that felt lazy; when the author …
Originally titled "The String of Pearls" and first published as a serial in 1846-7. I can see how this story would have worked as a serial, how people would get drawn into it as a detective suspense story especially if it was only printed like a chapter at a time in a weekly material. However, presented as a novel, it is slow-paced and can be a little frustrating to wade through all the excess verbiage. Though the over-elaborative narration can be considered the writing style of the era, I still find it too "flowery" with a strange way of beating around the bush in almost every sentence written. Several paragraphs could even be easily condensed down to a single sentence or two. It took reading half the book to get interesting.
There's also a writing style that spoke to readers in a way that felt lazy; when the author needed to get back to a certain character he said "now going to see Todd..."
According to the book's introduction - "Edward Lloyd employed a regular 'stable' of writers, and it was not uncommon for one 'hack' to begin a story, only to see the material then passed on to another member of the publisher's team for continuation, expansion, or completion. The String of Pearls as it first appeared was for many years attributed vaguely to the prolific Thomas Peckett Prest, although Prest himself was in fact said to have taken up the tale only after the failing eyesight or generally poor health of its originating author, one George Macfarren, prevented him from working on it any further (this would also help to explain why several narrative strands begun in the earliest chapters of the novel are completely disregarded in the subsequent pages)."
Exactly.
The readers are given many details in the first half until like ¾ part of the book, it even has a back story for a couple of characters. Then in the last parts, there aren't as much details given, which makes some of the earlier narration unnecessary after all. I was left with some questions about Mark Ingestrie. And there's this kid called Tobias whom i really liked, but i felt he wasn't given proper justice with his role. The vents happen all of a sudden without much detail.
I'm somewhere between rating it with 3 stars and 4 stars. I watched the Tim Burton movie a long time ago so I already know the central plot, thus I'm not surprised by the revelation anymore. I might be able to give it a straightforward rating if I didn't know those particular details before reading the book. Nonetheless, I still felt some suspense even though I knew the premise.