OK
If you liked The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window, this is for you. Coincidences, throwing in a famous historical name or ten, tedious implausible backstory linking it all : the similarities are there.
Most of it was shallow research cobbled together with cardboard characters. If only it had maybe concentrated on one of the historical flybys ... Shelley and Byron maybe (as they seemed the only link to "Romantic")... and given more depth, more sense of place, more valid interaction and character development.
I have enjoyed Boyd up till now. I find him a comfortable, immersive storyteller. This was annoyingly bland and tiresome.
