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Title: A Rare Benedictine
Series: Brother Cadfael #21
Author: Ellis Peters
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Medieval Mystery
Pages: 130
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
3 short stories. One about how Cadfael chose to become a monk and then 2 that were referenced in other books but never fleshed out.
| My Thoughts: |
Apparently, the previous book, Brother Cadfael’s Penance, was the “real” final book in the series. I kind of wish I had known that going in to this book so I wasn’t constantly looking for a series wrapup.
This was just a series of short stories about Cadfael. Beyond the first one where we find out just how Cadfael becomes a monk, the other stories felt extremely familiar, almost like re-treads. Nothing bad but nothing really good either. Decent reads is what I’d qualify it as.
I felt very “whatever” at the end of the book and am glad I’m done with Cadfael. Between this and the bomb that P.D. James turned out to be, I think I’m done with any sort of “mystery” genre or sub-genre for quite some time.
★★★☆☆
It is rather annoying when authors do that–publish a book which you think is going to be the last book of the series but it’s really just a bunch of short stories. I find it awfully lazy too.
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The thing is, the previous book would have been a good ending, if I knew it was the ending 🙂
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I’ve been thinking about mysteries, since I’m doing a few blog posts on books outside my normal genres. My guess is that readers have to like the characters, because with the “mystery” plot, there are two likely possibilities:
1) The reader solves it well before the character does, and gets bored.
2) The solution comes out of left field, annoying the reader – the killer is a character that hasn’t appeared before, or the motive is something not previously referenced, etc.
It seems almost impossible that the author would come up with a plot that is surprising, yet could still be tracked back given the presented information. Also, “surprising” would vary based on how much attention the reader was paying, and how imaginative they were.
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Yep, I agree with you. It’s probably why I’ve never stuck at a mystery series for the whole thing before.
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Shame this was a bit whatever
It’s annoying that it turned out to be a series of short stories rather than the series wrap up.
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A series wrapup would have been great. Oh well, at least I’m done and I made it through and I didn’t hate every second of it. I call that a win in my books 😉
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Well that’s good 😉
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Is it normal that the 21st book is just a collection of short stories? I didn’t have the impression that the previous books were short stories… I would’ve been a bit disappointed had I picked up the 21st book just to find out it’s 3 short stories compiled in it…
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It certainly didn’t seem normal to me.
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