Saturday, October 4, 2014

Obscure Fandom Day

Since I'm pretty dead from being in town all day, I thought a short post was in order.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you a book that I'm not even sure has a fandom!
 Some dear friends were kind enough to insist that we read this book; I'm sure glad they did. It's quite an intimidating-looking thing--not Les Mis heavy, but still pretty thick. In the beginning of the book whoever wrote the foreword said he took three days of steady reading to finish it.
So of course I said "Challenge accepted" and read it in two.
The Hidden Hand is fast-paced (for 1859), intense (yet still oddly lighthearted) and generally just fun. It's also American--see? I can read non-British things, if only on occasion. It's full of mysteries, abductions, broken hearts, grumpy old men, evil, mustache-twirling blackguards, Black Donald (I like him too much), and sass. Lots and lots of sass--mainly from Capitola, who is basically the opposite of a mild-mannered blonde Victorian heroine. She cracks me up.
I found it to be completely satisfactory in its ending--it has sad parts, but it neither sacrifices its characters to complete tragedy nor falls into the stereotypical happy ending trap. There are a lot of Christian themes woven in, not tacked on, which was impressive.
Its main fault is too many exclamation points! All the time! But we must forgive it its little quirks. We can't all be Jane Austen.
So if you've never read this book and are looking for something fun but not *too* fluffy, give it a try.   Jess and I are working on a dreamcast project, because there needs to be a movie for this thing. Once you read it, send one of us a note and we'll add you to the Pinterest board!
I hope I'm wrong about this book not having a fandom--now's your chance to prove me wrong.



3 comments:

jess dunlap said...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-yYkQcGbKymQ/VC2Q-TBbx-I/AAAAAAAASMY/Czg21fD39QU/s200/tumblr_lyfnjhRfGF1qmb9jyo1_250.gif

Heheh
Good post Catie!

Rebekah said...

Hmmm... I shall find and read this book...

Evangeline said...

Sound good! :D