Will Starling by Ian Weir

Will Starling by Ian Weir

• ISBN-10: 1586422308 - Paperback $17.00
• Publisher: Steerforth (February 3, 2015), 480 pages. 
• Review copy courtesy of Netgalley and the publisher.

The blurb:

The Reckoning of WM. Starling, Esq. a Foundling, concerning Monstrous Crimes and Infernal Aspirations, with Perpetrators Named and Shrouded Infamies disclosed to Light of Day, as set down by his Own Hand in this year 1816.

London, 1816. The Napoleonic War is over, Romanticism is at its high tide, and the great city is charged with the thrill of scientific discovery and Regency abandon. The nineteen-year-old foundling Will Starling returns from teh Continent, having spent five years assisting military surgeon Alec Comrie, and now is helping Comrie build a civilian practice in London's rough Cripplegate area. This means entering into an uneasy alliance with the Doomsday Men: graverobbers who supply surgeons with cadavers for dissection.  There are wild rumors about Dionysus Atherton, an old university friend of Comrie's and the brightest of London's emerging surbical stars, whispers of experiments on corpses not quite dead, in a bid to unlock the mystery of death itself.  Will owrks obsessively to ferret out the truth; the investigation twists and turns through brothels and charnel houses and the mansions of Mayfair.

Review:

Will Starling is set in the years after the Napoleonic War during a time when Doomsday men rob graves to help the surgeons and medical schools find cadavers with which to further their learning. Our lead character and narrator comes across clearly, with a strong character and powerful voice and the disadvantages of poverty, ugliness, and having been raised an orphan. He's both street smart and quite sharp, he's learned to live by his wits and is quite fond of large words and pretty turns of phrase. He's not shy about pushing himself forward and keeps his eye out for an opportunity. He apprentices to a surgeon and travels in the underworld, this leads him to discover the possible shady tactics of other surgeons and an illicit attempt to raise the dead.

The writing and language is sharp and distinct. Will Starling is an unusual lead character and for those who enter his world, someone hard to forget.