Book Review: "The London Séance Society" by Sarah Penner

More than often, I will find one of these Victorian style gothic mystery novels that was written by someone in the 21st century and contains all of these gothic horror and crime tropes which are more suited to a Mike Flanagan show. After reading a ton of them, I found The London Séance Society and honestly, it started out pretty darn good. Following the first chapter though, it sort of went downhill as if it quickly had run out of steam. Apart from the scenes containing the actual séances the book falls a little bit flat. Filled with characters and increasing amounts of complex story arcs, this book often overcomplicates itself in hope of becoming more dramatic like a soap opera. This I understand, but I did not enjoy as much as I thought I would. I did not feel like I knew characters enough or that there was enough atmosphere to make me feel as though I were in 1873.

The story is just this: Vaudeline has been training Lenna in the art of séances and Vaudeline's own speciality is that she can conjure up murder victims to identify their killers. Lenna's younger sister had recently been found dead and so, she came to Paris on her own terms to find out what had really happened to her sister. However, Vaudeline is called to London as the head of the London Séance Society has also been murdered. Unfortunately, both women find that everything has become ten times more dangerous now than it was before and must take extra precautions when going about their ways.

Here is where the book fell off for me: first of all, the storyline seems good enough and that was what initially drew me to the book. But the problem was just this: there was no atmosphere except for during the séances. This means it felt like the atmosphere was changing here and there so often that you couldn't really involve or immerse yourself in the book as you wish to do in especially, a Victorian style mystery.

Second of all, the book has too much to take in all at once. More than often, I found myself at the centre of something called 'information dumping' which is where a novel, not very well organised, dumps a lot of information in one or two chapters upon the reader and expects them to remember it all. This particular novel could have been suited to being 50-or-so pages longer to solve that problem.

Thirdly, I didn't find the character connections believable. The back and forth between two unlikeable characters like Vaudeline and Lanna was a bit of a bore come the second half of the story and there were a lot of difficulties when navigating the plot. It is quite a frustrating read when you are trying to immerse yourself in a Victorian-styled novel. There could have been a reduction of story to suit this and solve the problem of plot-holes, for which this novel has many.

Finally, I wish this novel were deeper. A lot of it feels like information that only really scratches the surface of what it is really trying to say. It feels like just a story, without themes or symbols or meaning or depth. It is enjoyable enough as a light read, but it is not something that I would recommend to people who like reading novels like I do. I want to become involved with the book, I felt like for the majority of this I was standing outside a closed door coated in frosted glass. There was nothing to think about afterwards. It felt a little empty.

All in all, for the want of a good story and nothing more, this book does that job. But if you are really looking for that next big great read, I have some unfortunate news for you. It is something that I will not read again though I will give this author another chance and read some more of her work in the coming years. Everyone has an off-day and it's not fair to judge an author on one book. The average qualities of this novel seem to pater out and make it an average text, but unfortunately, I need something more than average - I need something I can immerse myself in completely. This just did not do it for me.