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The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy (2000)

by Jacopo della Quercia(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

St. Martin's Griffin

review 1: First let me say that I thought there was a fun premise here -- a steampunk romp with Wm Howard Taft as the star? Brilliant. Now the bad news: the writing is facile at best, but firmly stuck in the juvenile vein most of the time. It reads like a graphic novel -- without pictures. I understand that the author is a historian -- his research is flawless, but his relentless didactic tone (tying throw-away details to documented newspaper articles of the time) comes off self-serving and a bit smug. When the author is not pointing out history, he's explaining it -- which comes off as though he thinks the reader is unknowledgeable. I think there's a good graphic novel here, it's just too bad there weren't any illustrations.
review 2: Like most others on this site, the ... moreauthor, Jacopo della Quercia, followed me on Twitter after I followed Cracked.com. I returned the favor and began to see numerous tweets about his upcoming book. I first thought of some dude writing his novel at Starbucks that would be crap and no one would wanna read. I'm not sure why, but I did. However, after I read some of the online chapters and was totally shocked and captivated, I bought it. And my gosh, this is the most purely fun book I've ever read. You have a solid political adventure in a 1910's background with some fantastic characters, (among those being William Taft, Robert Lincoln, John Wilkie, and others) and a seemless blend of fact and fiction. Every true, historical event that is mentioned has a newspaper referrence as a footnote at the bottom of the page, and that gives you assurance in the fact that this guy knows what he's talking about. At the same time, he uses his brilliant imagination to create a story that, while fiction, fits in perfectly with the times and world he's set up. All of this blends into an insanely fun read that will entertain and, in some cases, inform you. The only negative I can think of is that at first you see a piece of technology that is so ahead of it's time that you don't really believe it, but you learn to accept it, as it's very prominent in the book. Outside of that, there's not any strong negatives to this book that I can tell. If you enjoy history, adventure, and fat people throwing guys around like rag dolls, you'll love this book. It's definitely worth a shot. Well done, Mr. Quercia! less

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