This book is the first in a series by R. L. LaFevers. It’s 1906, London, and Theodosia lives mostly in a museum that her father is a curator of. Her mother goes to Egypt often to hunt for archeological finds. Theodosia can sense all the curses on the stuff her mother brings back and other stuff in the museum. And she’s taught herself how to deal with the curses and remove them. Mostly. And she gets caught up in a web of secret conspirators and blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, when I read that she was the daughter of the museum’s curator, I thought that meant her mother was curator. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I was definitely surprised when it turned out to be her father. I shouldn’t have been. I knew it was 1906.<\/p>\n

This book pretty quickly lost my interest. Theodosia was sneaking around the museum and I didn’t care. It’s not that I don’t like her. I do rather like her. It was more interesting when she was interacting with people. Except even that didn’t help after a certain point.
\n
\nShe has a brother, who I can’t even remember was older or younger. I thought older, but then he acted younger. Maybe they’re even twins. I don’t know. And she meets up with an orphan, street urchin, pickpocket. Because every London in the early 1900s has to have at least one. They made things mildly more interesting, for a time. Until she ditched them entirely.<\/p>\n

I was nearly done with the book. More than 2\/3rds of the way through, not quite to 3\/4ths when it shocked me by announcing Part 2. Part 2? Really? Just because she was headed for a ship doesn’t mean you needed to split the book in half.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the ship.. the Rosetta Maru? Nothing other than the name seemed remotely Japanese about it. It’s not the only weird name in the book, most of which seemed to have chosen or created for humor value. I don’t see what’s funny about Rosetta Maru. It’s just jarring.<\/p>\n

To get closer to the realm of nitpicking, there’s one scene where Theodosia begs the use of an envelope. And then she seals it. How? Had glue on the envelopes been invented yet? (Wikipedia says barely, perhaps 10 years before.) Was it at all ladylike to be sticking her tongue out to lick it? Because she definitely didn’t ask the guy for a damp sponge to do the job. Don’t go being all vague and hand-wavey. I was paying attention!<\/p>\n

In general, though, while I did like the main character, I found the whole thing rather dull. Maybe if I was closer to the target age of the books I wouldn’t. Maybe if I was a boy reading it I wouldn’t. I don’t know. It was a lot of action. Action I didn’t care about.<\/p>\n

Apparently Theodosia has doubts about the loyalty of her parents (to her, to Britain), but I didn’t really believe she really doubted all that much. So I didn’t get a feel for any of the angst she was (and wasn’t) doing about it. And, surprise, guys she thought of one way turned out to not be who she thought they were.<\/p>\n

It’s rather a shame I didn’t like it more, because it reminded me of Lloyd Alexander’s Vesper Holly series. A historical series about a girl who goes on adventures. Only his is funnier, and more interesting, and just better.<\/p>\n

So I won’t be reading the next books in the series. No interest in doing so whatsoever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book is the first in a series by R. L. LaFevers. It’s 1906, London, and Theodosia lives mostly in a museum that her father is a curator of. Her mother goes to Egypt often to hunt for archeological finds. Theodosia can sense all the curses on the stuff her mother brings back and other … Continue reading “J’s Take on Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,7,73],"tags":[25,69,60],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-j","category-review","category-theodosia-and-the-serpents-of-chaos","tag-childrens","tag-historical","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}