I was mostly just disappointed by Peter Ackroyd's [Hawksmoor] which is more or less billed as a detective story (though the detective doesn't actually appear until halfway through the book.) It's really a story about time.... and frankly, I wish I had the time I struggled through reading it back.

I did admire Ackroyd's voice in the story -- as he wrote in a sort of old English dialect and portrayed 18th century London. But that was really all I liked about the book.

I felt like Ackroyd was really reaching and trying to bury what he hoped would be an obscure story in an incredible number of details. The ending really didn't pay off so the story really didn't come together for me.

Alan Moore cribbed Ackroyd/Sinclair’s best ideas and used them to their most productive ends (imo), which isn’t to say I didn’t find Hawksmoor engrossing and highly readable, just maybe didn't find it fully satisfying.

Well, I finished it but no idea what it was supposed to be really about and the ending wasn’t any sort of ending. Very disappointing.

Thank sweet baby back ribs, I am done. This was a terribly uneven book for me. In some ways the writing was compelling and seductive. But if my attention wavers for mere seconds, all was lost and it took me weeks to fund the rhythm again.

I will chalk it up to my reading slump and not the author. Although I had hoped Hawksmoor would have been a bit more like DI Morse than creepy architect Nicholas Dyers.

Side note: Penguin's street art series is still one of my favorite cover series. I now own four and hope to eventually have the rest. I highly recommend it if you're interested in purchasing the book.

Dull and muddled book, confusing while plotless and characters don't read as real humans. Two stars as couldn't care enough to hate it.

A different take on either time travel or magic skipping between two time frames of central London. The characters are well written and develop well throughout the story. The story line generally hangs together well, but at times it is difficult to tell as parts of the story are written in old English, which I found difficult to understand and slow to read. Overall I enjoyed the book and there was a nice twist at the end.

Po jazykové stránce úžasně zajímavý román, ale příběh mi připadal trochu nedotažený.

What can one really say about Nicholas Hawksmoor or Nicholas Dyer other than their lives are separated by 250 years and yet in the events described by the author their lives aren't really that separated at all, neither by time nor space as it turns out. Ackroyd's novel is not a simple read that flows along a nice straight linear plot-line. Oh no. Hawskmoor quite creatively mixes the very different worlds our main characters inhabit, with many nice stylistic touches that lend a unique authenticity to the worlds the writer is describing, and brings the little creative enterprise to a rather satisfying close. Don't misunderstand, Ackroyd's prose is challenging, especially to those not familiar with alternate spellings found in now very old English works of literature. And yet without them I don't believe the novel would be as compelling. Hawksmoor is definitely a novel that English lit geeks will dig.

How to describe the plot? Devil-worshipping architect Nicholas Dyer builds several churches around London that require, to his questionable mind anyway, blood sacrifices, which he obliges with murder most foul! Fast forward a quarter of a Millenia and detective Nicholas Hawskmoor is investigating several grisly murders that ultimately connects him to his namesake Dyer in the past. I won't say how it all wraps up but merely encourage the reading of Hawksmoor. It's a novel that should be better known.