Lydia KangCritiques

I enjoyed this book! I love the history of New York, and the author does a good job bringing the reader to gilded-age Manhattan.
This is the second book that I've read from this author. Both were well-written and had some type of poison and murder as part of the plot.
This one involves a serial murderer, drug (opiate) addiction, and some surprisingly strange quack cures! I was really surprised by the ending.

I wasn’t sure I was going to finish this one because the first half felt a little predictable and repetitive. The concept was too good to abandon, though, and the second half turned out to be excellent.

2.5 stars. The story starts off very fast paced and it's interesting but somewhere half way through the book I started to lose interest. I didn't feel attached to ANY of the characters, not one and I think that may be why I began to lose interest in the story. The storyline is very interesting and there are some interesting twists near the end but I don't care about the characters at all. I know this book is the first in a series but I don't think I'll be continuing this series, but who knows I may change my mind, just to find out what's going to happen next.

Wow did I dislike this book. I hated the characters and had multiple issues with the storyline. I would have DNF’d it within the first few chapters if it wasn’t for a book club. I plan to stay away from this author entirely.

Hilarious! I enjoyed this book so much. I wish I could be able to read a book of quackery from our time in a couple of hundreds of years.

1918 New York and the city is struggling with the spread of the Spanish Influenza epidemic as well as WWI.
3 friends Birdie, Alene and Jasper are reunited at an engagement party only the party doesn't end how they expected when someone drops dead from poisoning.
This is a story about the friendship as well as a murder mystery, wonderfully full of twists and turns.
Just when you think you have it solved it changes. There are also many intriguing subplots that make you question if you have worked it out or not!
The details of Spanish flu which was a devastating, worldwide epidemic that killed .millions of people are really well written and you can tell that a lot of research has been put into this book. I also found it to be cleverly educational, I learned things about chemistry, clocks, poison, as well as the influenza.
I managed to plough through the book in just one sitting as it is so well written the pages soon fly by but I only guessed one of the "puzzles" and was totally surprised at the end, the twist was impossible to guess!
Wonderful book and i can't wait to read more from Lydia Kang

4.25½

The best part of this book is the twisting turns of the plot - just who are these characters and is what you are seeing what is really there? I wanted to like the characters more than I ended up doing.

A bisexual love triangle with hints of spies and the Manhattan Project. Just say NO! As my 5-year granddaughter would say, "ridinkulous!" I listened to this on audio 10 hrs 15 mins½

Interesting and well-written science book. I did find it to be overly long, some of the diseases discussed could have been cut in order to keep it lean and zesty.

I also have to say that in the chapter about typhoid, I thought it was irresponsible of the author to declare that Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) had a mental illness when there is no indication that she was ever diagnosed with one - a fact that the author freely admits immediately after asserting the mental illness claim! Just because someone has a disagreeable personality, and sometimes doesn't conform to social norms, doesn't mean they have a mental illness. The willingness of the author to label people as mentally ill, having never met them and coming from an entirely different cultural period, is deeply troubling.

Often gross, but always interesting, this book looks at all the weird and crazy things humans have tried in order to cure illness.

I think this is pretty good by High Republic adult novel standards, in that its narrative is fairly interesting, and some of the characters' arcs (namely those of the Greylarks) are compelling. Unlike the first Phase II novel "Convergence", this one falls prey to an issue with all of the Phase I adult novels--there are too many damn Jedi character pairs (master and knight/apprentice) who are pretty interchangeable. There's Orin Dargha/Gella Nattai, Yaddle/Cippa Tarko, Char-Ryl-Roy/Enya Keen, Creighton Sun/Aida Forte, with the last two pairs being particularly difficult to tell apart. I suspect the adult novels in Phase III (which is jumping ahead in time to where Phase I left off) will revert to form and be pretty bad. But we'll see.

this is super interesting and well done. there is scientific information about each disease, where and how it struck, and how it was brought under control. there is also an intimate story of a person, almost always patient zero, the first person to contract the disease and bring it to others where it spread to their communities. the authors weave the two together well and manage to keep this both lively and rigorous.

i really enjoyed the scientific explanation for (most of) the biblical plagues. and as much as i have been impacted and love and the band played on, i also liked that she took randy shilts to task on some of what he said in that book, especially about the man he claimed was patient zero. (turns out that hiv was around for more than 100 years before the explosion in the 80s!)

It's not a great sign if partway through a book, your reader stops to look it up online and says, "Oh, no it's not intended to be a young adult book." I've read some of Lydia Kang's work before and enjoyed it in a pulpy, historical mystery kind of way, and I hoped that Opium and Absinthe would fill that same niche. Sadly, it's nowhere near as strong as the previous book of hers I read.

It's set in Gilded Age New York where Tillie, member of a wealthy and overbearing family, develops an opioid addiction (remember, in the 1890s heroin was an over-the-counter cough medicine!) round about the same time that her elder sister is murdered in a manner bizarrely reminiscent of the hot new novel, Dracula. This scenario could be immense fun in the right hands!

Unfortunately, those hands are not Kang's. Pretty much everyone in this book has a case of the Stupids, and Tillie has the most advanced case of all. (There's one thing in particular she does near the end of the book that had me proclaim aloud, à la John Mulaney, "That's what I thought you'd do, you dumb fucking horse.") She's the kind of young female character that gets described as Spunky when really she's just massively irritating.

Underlying is an interesting eeryness

Characters inter-relate and cause you to form opinions and to choose favorites. But, in the end a lot of the elements you used to rate their value (wealth, social awareness, hard work, resilience, beauty, intellect, and loyalty) and choose who was to your liking and who was not - are twisted and turned into an ending that turns from the macabre and delivers a few glimmers of hope.

Underlying is an interesting eeryness

Characters inter-relate and cause you to form opinions and to choose favorites. But, in the end a lot of the elements you used to rate their value (wealth, social awareness, hard work, resilience, beauty, intellect, and loyalty) and choose who was to your liking and who was not - are twisted and turned into an ending that turns from the macabre and delivers a few glimmers of hope.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
When a book involves narcotics and a serial killer a la Coppola's Dracula making headlines in New York City in 1899, it is alluring. When it is written by Lydia Kang, and there is guarantee of a well researched atmospheric thriller, it is irresistible.

This was a very fun and, often very gross, record of defunct medical practices through the ages. Clearly, it is not an exhaustive list but it does run through quite a lot of medical charlatans, miscalculations and just plain mistakes through medical history. It is also written to be humorous, as one may have guessed with a title like "Quackery," so it takes a light tone and is very entertaining. I can now say that I know why we have the saying "don't blow smoke up my a**" and it is even weirder than I thought. lol! A very fun read that I highly recommend.

This read was both slow yet full of things going on, weird right?? Maybe this was because I listened to it on Audible and the orator took some time getting used to. Yes, she had varying registers for the different characters but they all somehow came off as a bit subdued.

Anyway, this book was eery and macabre (at times) and the twisty turns were all sorts of eeeeewwwww & What The?? And definitely messed up. Also, just so you know what you're getting into... it wasn't gorey or ghoulish or serial killer around the corner type tension filled. It wasn't any other subgenre of Horror either SO if that's your thing, you're going to be disappointed. Personally, thats not my jam... Life's scary enough in the Real why go forcing tachycardia, having to check and recheck each darkened corner of the room, jumping at the late night creaking of the house etc...? The fact that it wasn't nightmare fuel was a large part of why I enjoyed this book as much as I did... it skirted the terrifying and gave me a teenie taste of the Weird and Unusual... two of my favorites.

Now onto the stars of the show... the characters. These characters were robust and deliciously, morally gray gray gray... just as they should be. Everyone was dynamic and (most were) interesting. Each character, all the way on up through tertiary and beyond, had their own ulterior motives who also had their own ulterior motives. Just saying, people are shady. I was constantly reevaluating everything I knew to try and pinpoint friend from foe and to discern who was being honest and to what ends. If that sounds like a good time to you then you're going to want to add this to your TBR!

Overall:
This book pegged the Trifecta of Awesomeness... really solid writing, interesting background/premise and ultimately, the most important of the three in my humble opinion, excellent, diverse and entertaining characters. Our FMC, Cora/Jacob was brash, and clever with loads of moxie. She fit in nicely among the other innovative charismatic persona... mostly women. The MMC, Theodore Flint (Theo), was oblivious and a bit thick at times but he was also sweet, smart, loyal and able to reevaluate a situation and change his core beliefs when given irrefutable proof... a quality sorely lacking in our society today... anywho, I couldn't help but be charmed by him and I was rooting (vehemently) for him.

All in all I enjoyed this (audio)book! It even has a satisfying yet bittersweet conclusion that answers all of the questions and ties up each loose thread... I like the feeling of a one and done read sometimes and this one delivered!

~ Enjoy

Set in 2150 -- in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms -- this is about the human genetic "mistakes" that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.

When their overprotective father is killed in a terrible accident, Zel and her younger sister, Dylia, are lost in grief. But it's not until strangers appear, using bizarre sensory weapons, that the life they had is truly eviscerated. Zel ends up in a safe house for teens that aren't like any she's ever seen -- teens who, by law, shouldn't even exist. One of them -- an angry tattooed boy haunted by tragedy -- can help Zel reunite with her sister.

But only if she is willing to lose him.

What a wonderful, snarky and humorous review of Quackery in society. Unfortunately quackery continues even today as thousands have died during the Covid pandemic by trying alternative cures. A must read; though one should be warned if one take offense to sexual content. Otherwise go for it.½

Scary but fun read.

Spooky, pulls you in. I enjoyed this read and the parallels between the opioid addiction crisis in society then and now is startling.

Why two stars? For a history book, it completely lacks sources. You don't know where the information used in this book counts from and therefore could be completely made up. So I subtracted two stars. I also subtracted a star because I've read most of this in other books with better explanations and illustrations and without the atrocious commentary.

This was not a horrible book but the lack of sources, the style of writing, and the atrocious commentary leave very much to be desired. Decent if you want a general overview of quackery but little else.