The Sword and Laser discussion

First of all: I loved this book. I love the premise of Victorian/Gothic Amalgamated Universes. I think this is the best version of that I've ever encountered. But there was one thing missing that made it fall a bit flat for me-- the Supernatural.

One of the neat things about this period/ these stories is the conflation between the natural and the supernatural. You never know if a storm is dramatically appropriate or an act of God. You never know if That Thing You Made is just the product of science or spawn of the devil. The reader finds the science utterly alien, horrifying.

And then science just fails to account for other things-- vampires stalk the night. BUT. The conflation works the other way too. Just when science fails, in comes Van Helsing, who's used science not to understand the biology of Dracula, but to systematically organize and weaponize superstition and folklore.

In a period of such rapid advancement and societal turmoil, the tension that results from spooky science and somewhat-comprehensible supernatural things is really juicy, and it seems like the series is just abandoning that entirely. Yes, we get mentions of Renfield and Van Helsing, but (view spoiler)[ Van Helsing is another scientist doing experiments on his daughter-- there's no hint of Dracula at all on the rise (hide spoiler)]. The science too isn't treated as alien at all-- it's completely understandable to all the main characters. It's old hat. Resurrecting corpses is a 100 year old experiment that's just passe today. Anyone could do it, and no one wants to.

The only hint we get of what is, for me, the most interesting thematic stuff in these kinds of books are the arguments between the main characters about God-- and those are fine, they give us interesting information about those characters, but overall they're much more boring and less visceral than the way we see Supernatural Stuff be approached/ wrestled with/ etc in the source material.

I have consumed copious amounts of nyquil-- I hope the above makes sense

I had similar thoughts while I was reading! I also had a lot of fun with the book, but could have used a little more actual-supernatural rather than everything seeming to be done through science. I'm kind of hoping they may stumble across things that go more that direction as they get deeper into everything in further books. I'm not sure I really think she will do that, but I hope.

Perhaps the author will add some sobrenatural on the next books? Even though I believe that bringing people back from the dead is pretty much supernatural - nevermind the science coating.

What I did miss from the book was something completely different: Watson's wife. At this point in Sherlock Holmes chronology, Watson was already married - and seems to me that Theodora Goss knew (or researched) more than enough about these novels to have missed that. Was that intentional? Watson surely could have used some wife support when (view spoiler)[ he was recovering in the hospital (hide spoiler)].