Book review - Loot by Tania James
This one turned out to be a lot more boring than it seemed. It is a about a young, talented woodworker named Abbas from Srirangapatna, Mysore, whose work catches the eye of Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan enlists Abbas to work for him, under the apprenticeship of a French clockmaker named Lucien Du Leze. Together, they build a one-of-a-kind musical automaton of a tiger killing a British soldier, which is later stolen as a war prize when the British attack Mysore and kill Tipu Sultan. Abbas later moves to France, where he learns that the tiger has been given to the wife of one of the British soldiers. He goes to England with Jehanne, a girl he knew from his childhood that also went to France, to try and get the tiger back.
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I thought this book had a very interesting concept, but there are huge gaps in time left unexplained, random deaths that didn't make much sense, and an anticlimactic ending (its described as a heist novel but Abbas and Jehanne ultimately don't get the Tiger back, and for all his prodigious talent Abbas becomes a dollmaker). It did have a wry sense of humor that I enjoyed, though.
