S-l-o-w.

ADVENT, the first of a projected trilogy, suffers from the same flaw that made Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell so tough to read – long meandering pages of description and character musings. The story is more atmospheric than intriguing or compelling. My advice to novelists … Charles Dickens and Jane Austen are dead, stop trying to write like them!

The main character, Gavin, wallows in his own self pity for about two thirds of the book – no one understands him, how alone he is, how he keeps seeing Mrs. Grey everywhere – blah! blah! blah! Johann is just as bad … stuck in a narrative time loop telling the same story over and over and over again. 

I can’t imagine reading the rest of this trilogy.