This was one of the nominations for the next read for the FaceBook club that I am in. It was not the selection, but it sounded interesting. It certainly is.
I've been trying to remember what I had recently read that ran two timelines - it was Sarah's Key. That is far less complex than this one. There the timelines are barely a generation apart - here they are four hundred years apart. The seventeenth century story does not take a strictly chronological path, and then those characters start to appear in the 21st century. There is perhaps a parallel between the crimes committed in the name of alchemy (or as we would call it - science) and the crimes committed in the present day story. Those crimes are terrible and terribly convoluted, starting with the perversion of pure science and the corruption of men in its pursuit.
The narration is interesting. Lydia is not addressing us as she tells the story, but her lover, Cameron, who is a major player in the story. Although Lydia is at the center of everything, she still seems to be more of a passive observer than the usual protagonist. Things happen to her and around her, but she doesn't make them happen.
It is very difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys here. It was only when I had finished the book that I started thinking, "That should have been a clue that ... ." As Buttercup would have it, "things are seldom what they seem" in this story.
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