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Title: Will someone please teach Carter to show, not tell?
Review: I hoped to like this book. I have a great deal of respect for Carter, and he clearly knows his historical subject in detail. I also have lots of patience and even enthusiasm for historical detail in fiction--I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver series, which has a similar level of clearly well-researched detail included. However, Carter's fiction writing style is some of the most tedious I have encountered. I bravely soldiered on to page 90something before giving up in glassy-eyed despair. Every page is exposition, beginning to end, even the dialogue! Characters consist of historical explanations of the details of their lives. I felt like I was reading a long-winded description of a novel, or perhaps of the lengthy backstory notes for a novel, rather than the novel itself. I wish Carter the best, and hope that his fiction writing improves with experience.
