What do You think about Lake Of Sorrows (2006)?
Still sitting on my desk and propping up my dinner plateNo, it’s not propping up my dinner plate because it is bad. Quite the opposite. It is being used as a temporary balancer because I’m not yet ready to put it back on the bookshelf to gather dust.This book was a great read from start to finish. There are two murdered victims preserved in peat- a modern and an ancient one but the wounds appear similar. The suspects and suspicious characters mount to a degree I’ve never seen before in novels without reaching unrealistic proportions.There are secrets within secrets, deceptions, mistruths and many examples of people being used for another’s gain. That’s life. That’s a small village/town.Erin Hart captures the familiarity of the in club in a small town and extorts this atmosphere to create the environment in which there can be a series of murders and a list of suspects so long I did not guess the killer until the clues had mounted to a point of obvious realisation.Many authors cannot achieve this and the plot is up within a few chapters. Not this one! It keeps the reader interested and reels them along for over 400 pages of fast paced murder mystery and stewing relationship problems and successes. And, above everything, the environment is what sticks with me most about this book. The swampy peat land with its ancient sacredness and old names and history has seeped into my soul in the reading of this novel. I know a lot more, now, about swamps, the celts, and bee keeping and, somehow, it has made me feel more complete.Definitely a book to add to your memories and not to leave to dust on the bookshelf. I give this book a grand 5/5. If I could give it more, I could: not many books cling to the reader like this one. http://hollyemmaice.wordpress.com/201...
—Holly Ice
What can I say? This book was even better than the first. It's delicious. It makes you want to eat it until the very last bite, and long for more :) I've had a hard week and really needed some sleep yesterday - but couldn't close my eyes until I read the last page.Ireland. Mystery. A lot of mystery. Mysterious characters. Mysterious details.Bloody murders. Ancient history. Bog bodies. Romance. Suspense. On top of that, beautiful writing. What else can a person want from a good quality entertaining story?Some books are destined to be made into films. This one is simply perfect to be made into a computer game. I can already see it: Lake Of Sorrows Quest - discover the murderer before it is too late! Beautiful graphics. You play both for Cormac and Nora, collect evidence, do research, interview people. If such game ever appears, count me in, I want to buy it!
—Anna
Very pleasantly surprised by this book! I enjoyed it so much more than the first in the series. Now I'm wondering if I was simply too harsh a judge of the first one, or if Erin Hart really did improve that much as a writer from one book to the next. Either way, I'm SO GLAD that this series got better, because it always seemed like it should be exactly the type of book I'd love reading (mystery and archaeology set in Ireland. I mean, yes).In what ways did the series get better, you ask? Well, most of all for me, the book seemed a lot more thoughtful - lots of reflection on our connections to the past, both distant and more recent, and to the land. While there was still some romanticising, she didn't seem to linger quite as much over these old-fashioned, nostalgic scenes of rural life in Ireland as she did in the first book. I also really enjoyed the fact that the book had so many characters, and that there was so much going on aside from the central mystery. This could be a negative for some people - it didn't seem as tightly plotted as it could have been - but for me, it seemed like Hart was pushing the genre boundaries a bit, and I quite enjoyed that. Also a good deal of suspense, though I would have enjoyed it even more if (view spoiler)[Nora had continued to think that maybe Cormac was involved in the murders...? That wouldn't quite "go" with the romance subplot, but I never cared for that storyline, anyway. (hide spoiler)]
—Brandi
