This one is an oddity. It's the follow up to a book that was my favourite of last year: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by GW Dahlquist. The Glass Books was a magnificent piece of work - a piece of faux Victoriana written in both bodice-ripping and rip-roaring style (to borrow two well matched clichés). The action in it was non-stop, and it reminded me in a very positive way of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the Alan Moore graphic novels rather than the rather turgid film of the same name).
As a result of this, I was hugely looking forward to reading the sequel, the aforementioned Dark Volume. I even went so far as to buy it in hardcover, which is something I very rarely do. And in all honesty I found it pretty disappointing. The ending of the first book was clearly setting up a sequel, which I could forgive as the preceding 99% of the book made up for this. Unfortunately, it feels as though 99% of The Dark Volume is setting up a further sequel, and the "ending" of this book does nothing to disprove this or even to try to provide a proper finale. There seems to be less action, less peril, less everything that made the first book so good in this sequel. Perhaps my expectations were unduly high having enjoyed the first volume so much. Or perhaps, just perhaps, The Dark Volume really isn't anywhere near as good as it's wonderful predecessor.