It's hard and perhaps ungrateful to be critical of a book for which I paid nothing. It's also hard to work up the enthusiasm to read it. However, I was looking guiltily back through my e-reader library at all the wonderful free classic books I'd never read, not really fancying Aritsotle's Poetics or Beyond Good and Evil, when I remembered this.
And it was nothing like I'd imagined.
For some reason, the word golden had conjured some kind of mathematical construct, perhaps an unconscious association with Fibonacci, and I was sort-of expecting some kind of Beautiful Mind pastiche. What I got instead was a poor man's Doctor Who episode, without any of the BBC NOW-orchestrated dramatic tension, and a dim-watted lightbulb of an idea given life by a self-confessed fan of the author of The Meaning of Liff. I can't say it warrants a mention in the same sentence.
Alright, there are moments of snigger-worthy comedy, I seem to remember (but can find no evidence thereof currently), and even though the concept of a time-traveling history teacher, hell-bent on discovering the truth behind the myth of Robin Hood (in the process exposing him as somewhat of a fraud, a comic twist so obvious it was wearing a jester hat complete with jingley bells) is of interest, it is delivered rather lacklustrely and with a slightly fusty smugness that leaves me groping for coins at the kebab shop counter and only coming up with lint, disappointed and hungry, and slightly embarrassed.
For 99p I can't complain (I'm confident it was free when I downloaded it), and it's ticked a lot of boxes for the good people at Goodreads.com, who on the whole found it rather entertaining. I, however, was glad it was finally over and I could move on to something a little more cerebral.
(Paid link)
![Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow by [Fish, Andrew]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41BbR%2BkoRDL.jpg)
And it was nothing like I'd imagined.
For some reason, the word golden had conjured some kind of mathematical construct, perhaps an unconscious association with Fibonacci, and I was sort-of expecting some kind of Beautiful Mind pastiche. What I got instead was a poor man's Doctor Who episode, without any of the BBC NOW-orchestrated dramatic tension, and a dim-watted lightbulb of an idea given life by a self-confessed fan of the author of The Meaning of Liff. I can't say it warrants a mention in the same sentence.
Alright, there are moments of snigger-worthy comedy, I seem to remember (but can find no evidence thereof currently), and even though the concept of a time-traveling history teacher, hell-bent on discovering the truth behind the myth of Robin Hood (in the process exposing him as somewhat of a fraud, a comic twist so obvious it was wearing a jester hat complete with jingley bells) is of interest, it is delivered rather lacklustrely and with a slightly fusty smugness that leaves me groping for coins at the kebab shop counter and only coming up with lint, disappointed and hungry, and slightly embarrassed.
For 99p I can't complain (I'm confident it was free when I downloaded it), and it's ticked a lot of boxes for the good people at Goodreads.com, who on the whole found it rather entertaining. I, however, was glad it was finally over and I could move on to something a little more cerebral.
(Paid link)
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