I spoke too soon.
The Janissary Tree proves to be another novel written by an amateur author. The writing was lovely in some parts of the book, but excruciatingly puzzling in others. Goodwin's writing is rich with description; he leaves nothing to the imagination. Chocked with history, The Janissary Tree paints a well-informed picture of 1839 Istanbul. Goodwin obviously knows a tremendous amount about the Ottoman Empire. In some parts of the novel I thought he came off a little pretentious. More than once I found myself saying, "Enough, enough! I believe you that you know a whole bunch about the Ottomans. Get on with the story already."
The story proved to be weak. A good mystery usually has that "Aha!" factor in the end, when all is revealed and everything comes full circle. The Janissary Tree had too many holes, probably because the writing was unclear towards the end. It read almost like Goodwin was so excited about revealing the ending that he wrote in a fast frenzy, skipping important details. The Janissary Tree, like The Red Apple, was a fun and different way to absorb history. Although not perfect, I enjoyed both books (but for completely different reasons).
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I agree with you 100%! The author really does know his stuff about the Ottoman empire but definitely does not know how to write a good story. When the mystery was solved, all I pretty much said to myself was "Oh." It was not exciting because the plot jumped around too much and got too confusing. To me, the book read like a movie, which can be interesting, but in this case, it was not. It only made it more confusing.
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