Time for Sherlock Holmes

Rating:
Summary: The more time, the less Holmes
Review: Dvorkin starts this book superbly, as he reproduces Watson's narrative voice of the Doyle works almost perfectly. Included are those splashes of humor the experienced Holmes reader will expect (one being a mention that many pastiches have been written, which is a priceless way for this book to poke fun at itself).

The time-travel elements are believably handled, at least within the scope of science fiction, and for awhile we can feel we're indeed following the real Holmes and Watson into both their futures and ours.

Regretably, the book loses focus, however. It seems the farther into the future it goes, the less believable the story becomes.

By the last two chapters, the book has degraded into over-the-top sci-fi, with Holmes and Watson being little more than names.

I can easily recommend the first half to three-quarters of this book to a Sherlockian, but you might want to stop there, saving yourself from an ending that cheapens an otherwise good story.

Rating:
Summary: Good start, interesting ideas, but declines towards the end
Review: Like jedwardp, I thought this book started quite well and was interesting to read at first, but then declined. The author initially had a good handle on both Holmes and Watson, and some intriguing ideas. But as the book progressed, the characters became more like vehicles for the plot than like "real" people. Dvorkin even seemed to forget about some of the questions raised in the earlier parts of the book. For example (without giving too much away), when Watson first meets Lily, he wonders about her family, but doesn't get a chance to ask. Given how much time the two of them end up spending together, surely he got a chance at some point to ask--and we should've seen his reaction to the information. But the matter is essentially dropped. Characters sometimes changed without much explanation--apparently more because the plot required them to do so than for any other reason. It's rather a shame that the book didn't focus more on the people, their motivations, and their reactions to what was happening.

Rating:
Summary: Carries on the Doyle tradition!
Review: One might think the master himself were alive and well and still chronicling the adventures of Holmes and Watson, so skillfully has David Dvorkin carried on the tradition. This beautifully crafted pastiche sticks faithfully to the language, flavor and attitude of the original stories. All our old friends are there: Dr. Moriarty, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft. But there's an elixir of youth, and an interesting bit of time travel, thrown in for good measure. Get this: "Holmes vanished from the Libration Satellite shortly after I managed to get him unseen off the Exeter, his disappearance as unannounced as his coming." And this: "I pondered what I had come to regard as the central problem of immortality: While physically I was as a man in his twenties, and indeed looked much that age....I surprised myself upon occasion with my mental rigidity, my stodginess, and my querulousness." And another quote too good to omit: "I had lived to see my earlier chronicles of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson become world-famous; and yet, since copyright does not last forever and cannot be renewed indefinitely, I was no longer earning royalities." This is good stuff! You'll love it.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good pastiche
Review: One of the better pastiches out there, with an inventive plot involving Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, time travel, atomic explosions, life on Mars, and more. There are a number of slow spots and Dvorkin's style is pedestrian -- and not a convincing replica of the voice of Doyle's Watson -- but all in all an enjoyable read.