This was an interesting and unique read. I love gothic mysteries and the like, so I was highly anticipating reading this one, but it ended up not quite meeting the hype for me. I was a bit confused through quite a bit of this story about everything and then I started to figure things out toward the end, or I think I did but wasn't entirely sure. It was longer than I expected, but when I got to toward the end is when it started getting more interesting for me. I'm a little curious to know what will happen next, but not sure if I will read to find out or not.
This story is about Mr. Crowe, who is magical/has magic, his servant Eustace, and Clara, who is their ward, and she has magical powers to create living things. Mr. Crowe kills someone, and Eustace has to protect Clara. Clara, a mute, has an interesting world of her own, and Eustace also proves to be interesting as we learn more about him. Thanks so much to Tin House for letting me read and review this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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This is a book that has a lot of potential, unfortunately, that is all it has. There is nothing interesting to this book. The characters that are suppose to be interesting only come off as boring. The mystery of who Mr. Crowe, Clara, and Prof. Chastern are so vague that they don't really seem very powerful. I get what the author was trying to do, but it didn't work.

I mostly kept reading this book to see if something interesting does actually happen. And it doesn't. Even the ending is boring. Add in language that is over the top, mostly used to evoke a different era, but without any sort of action, it just feels presumptuous. There are no high points, no low points, just sort of a dreary gray that doesn't really change. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2019/12/2019131-maker-of-swans-padraig-odonnell.h... ( )

Magic and mystery.

This is a strange book, where all is not as it seems. Not quite to the extent of Alice in Wonderland, but in a similar, less extreme vein. There is some beautiful, almost poetic writing and the characters feel like players in a period piece, such as Jane Eyre.

In the opening scenes we meet Mr Crowe, whose behaviour is particularly heavy-handed and who sets in motion a series of events that he appears to have very little control over. His manservant, Eustace is left to pick up the pieces and attempt to minimise the damage, but eventually, Crowe is called to account by the creepy Dr Chastern and his nasty sidekick, Nazaire.

Several questions are left unanswered, such as who really was Mr Crowe? He appears to be an elderly (centuries old?) author of sorts, who has lost his motivation and now spends his time in a rambling old house with a woman who he picked up at a night club. Two other people live with him - his mute ward, Clara, who also possesses mysterious powers, and the devoted Eustace.

Eustace has his own backstory but this part I found less captivating. Ditto Clara's captivity, both of which form the second part of the book. I would have liked Clara to have had some backstory too. The ending was unfortunately a bit rushed, though maybe the author had backed himself into a corner by this time. For me it was the magic and mystery of the first half of the book that earned this novel its four stars.

I don't think I would have enjoyed this story so much if I'd read it in hard copy but I was listening to an Audible version, which was beautifully narrated by Mike Grady and Imogen Wilde. My only niggle with the narration was that Ms Wilde did not have enough variation in her voices and so Nazaire sounded very much like Arabella. ( )

An overlong book with too much going on.
Did not hold my interest, sorry.
I was given a digital cop of this book by the publisher Orion Publishing Group via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review. ( )