★★★☆☆ Fun, but I didn't believe it

Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society

Stuart Gibbs

We knew from the ending of Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra that the next historic secret Charlie would chase after would be something discovered by Isaac Newton. In fact, as the title suggests, it is broader than that. This one involves not just Newton, but many of his colleagues and fellow members of the Royal Society of London. In fact, at 413 kindle pages, this is the longest Charlie Thorne installment so far, and that is partly because in addition to Newton, we end up chasing the history of several of his contemporary Fellows of the Royal Society.

Although I really have no information about Stuart Gibbs's creative process other than that revealed by the end matter in his books, I have long suspected that he writes his novels backward -- that is, that he imagines the end first, and then writes the earlier sections in order to move his people and pieces to the place where that ending can transpire. For what it's worth, he begins the Notes and Acknowledgments with which this novel ends by describing what inspired it, and that inspiration is about the final scenes of the book.

So, when I read a Stuart Gibbs novel I expect the final scene to be the best -- the purpose towards which everything that came before was working. And this time, I am sorry to say, I found the final scene disappointing. I didn't believe it. Let me state right up front that, yes, I am clear on the concept of fiction. You're not *supposed* to believe a story like this -- you know it's just a tale. But at some level, you do need to believe as you read. That's why we talk about suspension of disbelief. It's a collaboration between the author and the reader. And this one just didn't work for me.

Why? Well, partly it was because the secret was just too much of a stretch. He addresses that as follows

And while I’m at it, the idea that we might be able to ... isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. There are a good number of respected scientists who believe that it’s possible.

I am, as it happens, familiar with the research he alludes to here, and nevertheless the story as told here just felt too far-fetched.

Besides that, there were a couple of other things that bothered me. For one, early on Charlie gets herself into trouble by behaving foolishly. I know you need to get your hero into some kind of trouble to have a plot, but to do it by having your super-intelligent hypercompetent hero act like an idiot undermines the entire premise of the series.

Also, Gibbs has an unfortunate tendency at times to be sloppy about facts. I think the first time I really noticed this was in Spy School Revolution, when Ben claims to have read the story of the Trojan Horse in The Iliad -- the story of the Trojan Horse in fact appears nowhere in The Iliad. This made nonsense of a major plot point. Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society is marred by a number of smaller factual errors. I'm not going to list them here, but I have noted some of them in my kindle notes, which Goodreads users can look at, if they care.

So, overall it was fun, and I have no doubt Gibbs's devoted fans will give him all the stars. I cannot.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

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