Slough House Dead Lions, Book 2, (Paperback)

Solid well built book with the same great characters in a new interesting story. Sequels are tricky and in the current landscape its easy to treat all forms as equal. Books have the freedom to meandor more to be more about the ideas. As those ideas travel well with the execution of the form. Spending time getting to know the characters to see them on a boring day is good its expected with a show it can be called bad pacing even if its not. What I mean is this book like the show and its relative second season is more of a detour. Same characters, but the stakes are shifted and it spends more time away from the action away from the center. Its a step back, but with everything that made the first book good still returning. In the show it feels a bit like a speed bump but here it is a welcome time to flesh things out to separate the characters we like and see them in new interesting environments. Second I think its important to talk about the physical object. This is as much a review about this version of dead lions in this format as it is about the story there in, even more so. I would say that a Walmart review is more so for the thing you are buying than the stuff that makes up that thing. So the book is well built. It has an odd partial cover with a plastic first page. It is likely less durable than your average book, but books in general are stable so overall longevity and the ability to throw in a bag should be treated as you would treat an average book. The back has a plastic section that covers a third of the back cover that tactically I don't like it is both too grippy and too slippery. There is a brief preview of the next book at the end of this one and that is a welcome bonus. I find the stream the show on apple tv little circle on the front a bit astetically unpleasant, but overall it is mostly a non issue. Lastly while still easily legible the font quality in my book that is the clarity of the actual words was not excellent. It would be too far to say they were fuzzy, and most notable when moving between two different books, but even when compared to the first book in the series published and printed by the same publisher (I think) the quality was noticeably worse. If you have problems with your vision it is a consideration and it leads me to think longevity would be worse than average. In a well lit environment I would think most people would be able to read the text fine. All else page quality font size durability thickness weight are as you would expect from a 350 page book with average font. Overall a welcome edition in the series that encourages me to keep reading. And the physical form while lacking in some areas is good enough in others to provide an average book owning experience.