Shaharazad Haas is fun—if by "fun," you mean a walking, talking chaotic neutral alignment chart who exists solely to be unpredictable. She’s entertaining, sure, but she doesn’t develop. John Wyndham, meanwhile, is essentially a sentient pearl-clutch, existing to react to Haas with increasing exasperation. Their odd-couple dynamic is amusing but repetitive. The side characters? A parade of over-the-top weirdos who are more “set dressing” than actual people. Fun? Yes. Deep? Not even a little.

Khelathra-Ven and its multiversal weirdness are the book’s biggest strengths—and also its biggest distractions. Hall throws every bizarre idea imaginable into the mix, creating a city that feels like Sherlock Holmes took a wrong turn into The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath while high on opium. It’s cool, but it also never stops. The novelty wears thin when every scene feels like a fever dream, and sometimes the setting overshadows what little plot exists.

Hall writes with flair—sometimes too much flair. The narration is Victorian pastiche dialed up to 11, and while the wit is undeniable, the book often feels like it’s winking at itself so hard it might sprain an eyelid. The humor is sharp, but it relies on the same joke over and over: “Wyndham is scandalized, Haas does something unhinged.” It works… until it doesn’t. Dialogue is fun, but the prose sometimes reads like it’s showing off for an audience rather than telling a story.

Mystery? Oh, right, that thing. The actual plot is like a tourist lost in Khelathra-Ven—visible in the distance but constantly getting sidetracked by some eldritch sideshow. It’s not that the mystery is bad, but the book often forgets it exists, meandering through detours that are fun but add little. By the time the solution arrives, it’s hard to care because the journey was mostly about the spectacle rather than the story.

Did I want to keep reading? Most of the time. But did I have to? Not really. The world and characters are engaging enough to carry the book, but the lack of narrative urgency makes it easy to set down and forget about for a while. Sure, it’s fun when things happen, but the pacing is so uneven that for every fascinating revelation, there’s a stretch where it feels like the book is stalling just to show off another bizarre corner of its universe.

Haas is an all-powerful sorceress with a suspiciously convenient ability to do whatever the plot requires. The book plays it off as “of course she can do that,” which is fine for style but frustrating for stakes. The relationships, particularly between Haas and Wyndham, don’t really develop—they just… exist. Their dynamic is clear from chapter one and doesn’t evolve much beyond “straight-laced guy deals with chaos gremlin.” The rest of the relationships range from mildly interesting to entirely forgettable.

There’s a lot to love in The Affair of the Mysterious Letter—if you have the patience for its relentless absurdity. It’s clever, ridiculous, and frequently entertaining, but it’s also exhausting. By the time I finished, I admired what it tried to do more than I loved the experience of reading it. It’s the literary equivalent of a decadent, overly sweet dessert—great in small bites, but overwhelming in large portions.

This book is like a magic show where the magician keeps pulling rabbits out of hats long after the trick has stopped being impressive. It’s fun, creative, and witty, but the excess often works against it. If you enjoy style over substance, endless absurdity, and Sherlockian pastiches dunked in Lovecraftian weirdness, you’ll have a great time. If you need a focused story and character development, this one might drive you up the wall.