Blood and Circuses - ComeLibros Club

English language

Published March 23, 2014 by Constable.

ISBN:: 978-1-4721-1578-2

(1 review)

Phryne Fisher is bored. But is she tired enough to leave her identity, home and family behind to join Farrell's travelling circus? Strange things have been happening there and when Phryne is asked by her friends Samson the Strong Man and Doreen the Snake Woman to help, curiosity gets the better of her. Peeling off her wealth and privilege, Phryne takes a job as a trick horse rider, wearing hand-me-downs and a new name. Someone seems determined to see the circus fail and Phryne must find out why they want it badly enough to resort to poison, assault - and murder ...

4 editions

nerd teacher [books] reviewed Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood

Solid story, still frustrating.

3 stars

Content warning Some things related to queer handling. Not always great but also not terrible.

The first thing is that there are characters in this book who are awful towards an intersex person (especially one police officer who, though he was being told to shut up, should've been made to find his way into a river). Otherwise, the handling of some very queer characters is somewhat surprising in that it's not... as terrible as I kept expecting it to be, especially as it's shown with a degree of complexity for both the deceased intersex character (Mr Christopher) and a masculine woman (Molly Younger—who does exclaim that she's a man in dialogue of the text). I'm not... sure that this level of complexity was entirely intentional, but it is interesting.

Not sure I like that the setting is a circus and carnival, with people getting listed as 'freaks'... I know it's a thing, and I know the setting of the book is in the 1920s... but it does kind of spark questions.

Overwhelmingly, the story was better for a young police officer. Phryne's part of the book were largely... a lot of things related to her having sex, which is whatever... but it also makes it feel less like Phryne's book and more like that of Constable Harris and Detective Inspector Robinson... and like she was a side character in her own series.