long and boring and stupid. ( )

I'm actually not sure how this book ended up in my collection--it may have been a gift--but I'm so incredibly glad that it did. I can't remember when I've last read a book that was so much fun.

Quercia's blend of history, adventure, and steampunk fantasy is brilliant, and once I began reading the book, I couldn't stop. If I were more of a history buff, I'm positive that I would have enjoyed this even more, but as it is, I just adored it. I'd recommend it to anyone. ( )

Jacopo Della Quercia's book is pleasant enough – and easy to read, despite its busyness – but serves as an example of how an unremarkable writer can get published nowadays if he works on maximising his marketing and networking skills, rather than his writing. Play the game and you get the slick book design and the validation of being a 'writer', even if the final piece is – objectively speaking – uninspiring. The audience and the website endorsements are already there, you see.

Because were it not for that pre-existing platform, there is no way The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy would receive such overwhelmingly positive feedback. Like I said, it is pleasant enough, but as a piece of writing it is second-rate. A heavy-handed writing style undermines an idea that should have been rich and racy. It is a smorgasbord of historical touchpoints, but there are far too many to mesh effectively – and that is even before the writer decides to leave all his research clutter on the page. There are too many characters, so that not only do you lose track of who is who, but you never get enough time with anyone to warm to them. There are also far too many plot points, so that you move from one story beat to the next without really knowing why. The sense of conspiracy is lost (and peters out disappointingly at the end), as are the moments of drama. The action scenes are summarized rather than written to thrill.

The dialogue is functional, one-note and often seems to be speaking to the reader rather than to other characters ("My decision to stand against you strained our relationship throughout this whole war," Abe Lincoln says to his son on page 177). For a book with such an outlandish and irreverent pitch, there is damningly little humour. A tasteless final act – in which the likes of Thomas Andrews are gunned down on the Titanic (pg. 344) – serves as the final clumsiness in a steampunk contraption that has more than one or two leaky steam valves. ( )

If you want a summer read that’s both gripping and silly, Jacopo Della Quercia’s The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy is just the read for you. One could also make a case for it as an unconventional choice for back-to-school reading. Take your pick.

In the America of this novel, William Howard Taft is much more interested in prize fighting than in presidenting—in the political arena he’s just a beard for his wife, Nellie, who really runs the country. Taft spends his time aboard Airship One (a dirigible) with his sidekick Robert Todd Lincoln holding special Cabinet meetings (the “special” cabinet is the liquor cabinet).

Taft and Lincoln stumble into a mystery via a pocket watch that previously belonged to Abraham Lincoln. They set off to solve the mystery, after first disabling the run-amok Taft automaton taking the President’s place in the White House:

“Mr. President… your decoy is stuck in the bathtub again.”

“Confound it! I keep telling them its exhaust port is not submersible. Someone get Nikola Tesla on the telegraph. Tell him I’m tired of plugging holes in the backside of Thomas Edison’s engines!”

This is pretty much the tenor of the entire work and it’s good fun, balancing the ridiculous with the historical. In fact, the more you know about American history, the more you’ll enjoy it. Della Quercia has a long resume as both a teacher of history and a writer of satire, and The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy is full quick snippets of humor.

Thomas Edison is the brunt of a number of jokes. At one point, Taft paraphrases Edison saying, “He said something about perspiring and taking credit for other people’s inventions.” Later in the story, the first officer of the Titanic looks at Taft “with the same shock as if he had just seen an iceberg.”

As Taft and Lincoln come closer to understanding the mystery initiated with the discovery of the pocket watch, almost every major figure of the era is brought into the action: cabinet members, army officers, barons of industry, Arthur Conan Doyle, even the rapacious King Leopold of Belgium.

When you need a pick-me-up with enough complexity to stay satisfying throughout, you can’t do better than The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy.

*****

I received an electronic ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed are my own. ( )