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Blade And Bone by Catherine Johnson
The Blurb On The Back:
Can Ezra escape the terror of the revolution?
Young surgeon Ezra McAdam must hasten to France to find his missing friends – but Revolutionary Paris is a dangerous place to be if you’re English.
Citizen Renaud is keen to enlist Ezra’s help experimenting with reanimation. The regular beheadings are providing useful fodder for his research.
But Ezra mustn’t be distracted from his search. He needs to find Loveday and rescue the young prince Mahmoud – at all costs.
It’s several months after SAWBONES. Ezra McAdam has been building his surgeon’s practice while Loveday accompanies Prince Mahmoud to Paris where they plan to sell the ruby in order to pay for passage to Istanbul. When Loveday writes to Ezra saying that Mahmoud has gone missing, he knows that he has to go and help her. But Paris is in the grip of the Revolution and English people are viewed as spies and enemies of the revolution.
Fortunately Ezra knows the doctors Bichat and Figuad from his master’s funeral and they in turn introduce him to Citizen Renaud, a doctor carrying out experiments on the heads of those killed by Madame Guillotine. Intrigued and repulsed both by the science being practiced and the ideals of the Revolution being perverted, Ezra befriends a street child, Luc to help him find his friends but the Russians are already on Mahmoud’s trail and the fever of suspicion and violence in the city means that no one can be trusted ...
Catherine Johnson’s historical YA sequel is a breakneck paced affair rich in historical detail and strong at dealing with racial prejudice but at times the pacing is too brisk and for me some of the characterisation (especially Loveday) suffered as a result, which is a shame as it’s a strong book that tackles a fascinating time. Ezra really develops in this book – I particularly enjoyed his moral and physical queasiness at assisting in Renaud’s experiments and I enjoyed his interactions with the dashing General Dumas (a real person from the period). Luc is also a welcome addition – smart but vulnerable I wished that there had been more interaction between him and Ezra and Mahmoud really gets downgraded as a side character thanks to his arrival. Likewise some of Loveday’s behaviour seemed out of character given the events in SAWBONES and existed to serve the plot more than her and Ezra’s history (I particularly disliked her impetuousness, which only showed to prove how little she’d learned). Johnson’s got a strong feel for the period – conveying a sense of what Paris was like as the Terror starts to gear up and Ezra behaves like a young man of the time but the plot does jump at times (notably the tacked on postscript) and I wished there’d been more room to breathe. With the duology completed, I would definitely check out Johnson’s next book.
The Verdict:
Catherine Johnson’s historical YA sequel is a breakneck paced affair rich in historical detail and strong at dealing with racial prejudice but at times the pacing is too brisk and for me some of the characterisation (especially Loveday) suffered as a result, which is a shame as it’s a strong book that tackles a fascinating time. Ezra really develops in this book – I particularly enjoyed his moral and physical queasiness at assisting in Renaud’s experiments and I enjoyed his interactions with the dashing General Dumas (a real person from the period). Luc is also a welcome addition – smart but vulnerable I wished that there had been more interaction between him and Ezra and Mahmoud really gets downgraded as a side character thanks to his arrival. Likewise some of Loveday’s behaviour seemed out of character given the events in SAWBONES and existed to serve the plot more than her and Ezra’s history (I particularly disliked her impetuousness, which only showed to prove how little she’d learned). Johnson’s got a strong feel for the period – conveying a sense of what Paris was like as the Terror starts to gear up and Ezra behaves like a young man of the time but the plot does jump at times (notably the tacked on postscript) and I wished there’d been more room to breathe. With the duology completed, I would definitely check out Johnson’s next book.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
Young surgeon Ezra McAdam must hasten to France to find his missing friends – but Revolutionary Paris is a dangerous place to be if you’re English.
Citizen Renaud is keen to enlist Ezra’s help experimenting with reanimation. The regular beheadings are providing useful fodder for his research.
But Ezra mustn’t be distracted from his search. He needs to find Loveday and rescue the young prince Mahmoud – at all costs.
It’s several months after SAWBONES. Ezra McAdam has been building his surgeon’s practice while Loveday accompanies Prince Mahmoud to Paris where they plan to sell the ruby in order to pay for passage to Istanbul. When Loveday writes to Ezra saying that Mahmoud has gone missing, he knows that he has to go and help her. But Paris is in the grip of the Revolution and English people are viewed as spies and enemies of the revolution.
Fortunately Ezra knows the doctors Bichat and Figuad from his master’s funeral and they in turn introduce him to Citizen Renaud, a doctor carrying out experiments on the heads of those killed by Madame Guillotine. Intrigued and repulsed both by the science being practiced and the ideals of the Revolution being perverted, Ezra befriends a street child, Luc to help him find his friends but the Russians are already on Mahmoud’s trail and the fever of suspicion and violence in the city means that no one can be trusted ...
Catherine Johnson’s historical YA sequel is a breakneck paced affair rich in historical detail and strong at dealing with racial prejudice but at times the pacing is too brisk and for me some of the characterisation (especially Loveday) suffered as a result, which is a shame as it’s a strong book that tackles a fascinating time. Ezra really develops in this book – I particularly enjoyed his moral and physical queasiness at assisting in Renaud’s experiments and I enjoyed his interactions with the dashing General Dumas (a real person from the period). Luc is also a welcome addition – smart but vulnerable I wished that there had been more interaction between him and Ezra and Mahmoud really gets downgraded as a side character thanks to his arrival. Likewise some of Loveday’s behaviour seemed out of character given the events in SAWBONES and existed to serve the plot more than her and Ezra’s history (I particularly disliked her impetuousness, which only showed to prove how little she’d learned). Johnson’s got a strong feel for the period – conveying a sense of what Paris was like as the Terror starts to gear up and Ezra behaves like a young man of the time but the plot does jump at times (notably the tacked on postscript) and I wished there’d been more room to breathe. With the duology completed, I would definitely check out Johnson’s next book.
The Verdict:
Catherine Johnson’s historical YA sequel is a breakneck paced affair rich in historical detail and strong at dealing with racial prejudice but at times the pacing is too brisk and for me some of the characterisation (especially Loveday) suffered as a result, which is a shame as it’s a strong book that tackles a fascinating time. Ezra really develops in this book – I particularly enjoyed his moral and physical queasiness at assisting in Renaud’s experiments and I enjoyed his interactions with the dashing General Dumas (a real person from the period). Luc is also a welcome addition – smart but vulnerable I wished that there had been more interaction between him and Ezra and Mahmoud really gets downgraded as a side character thanks to his arrival. Likewise some of Loveday’s behaviour seemed out of character given the events in SAWBONES and existed to serve the plot more than her and Ezra’s history (I particularly disliked her impetuousness, which only showed to prove how little she’d learned). Johnson’s got a strong feel for the period – conveying a sense of what Paris was like as the Terror starts to gear up and Ezra behaves like a young man of the time but the plot does jump at times (notably the tacked on postscript) and I wished there’d been more room to breathe. With the duology completed, I would definitely check out Johnson’s next book.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.