For all the tweets and Twitter mentions of Gerald Ayode, president of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture, this book actually feels as though it takes place in the 1930s and 1940s of the "Thin Man" movies starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. Beyond Belief moves along at a leisurely pace, and its humor is gentle-- those aforementioned tweets are one of the best parts of the book. Smith excels in creating setting, atmosphere, and a dazzling array of characters, but the book lacks cohesion.
This is the fourth book in the Emily Castles series, and the first that I've read. From the beginning I felt as though I was missing some important background on the main characters, and this feeling never went away. Although the cast is marvelous, several of the characters' motivations were never clear. The tone of the book jerks back and forth between Smith's wacky, gentle humor to a more sinister note. If anything, I felt that this story needed about fifty more pages to add more detail and to smooth out rough spots. There's much to appreciate in Beyond Belief: the author's ability to set a scene, her talent for characterization, her use of humor; but in the end the story itself isn't quite up to the task.
This is the fourth book in the Emily Castles series, and the first that I've read. From the beginning I felt as though I was missing some important background on the main characters, and this feeling never went away. Although the cast is marvelous, several of the characters' motivations were never clear. The tone of the book jerks back and forth between Smith's wacky, gentle humor to a more sinister note. If anything, I felt that this story needed about fifty more pages to add more detail and to smooth out rough spots. There's much to appreciate in Beyond Belief: the author's ability to set a scene, her talent for characterization, her use of humor; but in the end the story itself isn't quite up to the task.
