The Love of Stones by Tobias Hill (2/20/12 -- )
This book was downright awful. I was less than 30 pages in before I stopped reading it. In theory, the plot sounds fairly interesting: a women is searching for an infamous brooch worn by Elizabeth I that has been lost in history. The brooch consists of 3 gigantic rubies framed by 3 perfect pearls -- it can actually be seen in some portraits of Elizabeth I, which is really cool.
But, unfortunately: the writing is terrible. The book is super dense and -- remember that I have a degree in English literature and am in graduate school to teach English -- I had an incredibly hard time even deciphering the plot. The story switches back and forth from present to past from paragraph to paragraph, and frankly, the past isn't very interesting. It's something about the first guy who wore this brooch but who ultimately lost his land and life to a battle with the French king in somewhere between 1400-1550. The text is so dense that I actually couldn't figure out when this even was taking place.
Once the story gets into the present tense and stays there, it does not, unfortunately, get more interesting. The main character has an in-depth knowledge of gems and their value, origins, black market trafficking, etc. But she is thoroughly un-empathetic; she is written as cold and presumably calculating. The author was probably going for gem-smuggling bad-ass female protagonist, but he just didn't pull it off. I felt nothing for this character and when she meets with failure in her first underground jeweler meeting, I had no thoughts or feelings of empathy whatsoever -- actually, no feelings of sympathy either, which is an extra-bad sign in literature. Great authors evoke empathy; good, even just decent, authors evoke sympathy. Here, I had nothing.
I put this book down within a few days and I will not be picking it back up.
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