Thumbs up for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Flavia de Luce definitely gives off an Artemis Fowl vibe, though instead of explicitly desiring to take over the world her mission is to clear her father’s name for murder. The mentality is the same, though. An eleven-year-old genius of chemistry, our scathing narrator is fantastic company. The book has some flaws; it is rather too long (some of the bicycling-around could have been cut) and the denouement in particular fell flat. But those seem like debut-author issues that won’t be repeated, and Flavia herself is such good fun that I think I will sometime give the next volume a shot.
The entrance hall was painted a madhouse apple green: green walls, green woodwork, and green ceilings. The floors were covered with cheap brown linoleum so pitted with gladiatorial gouges that it might have been salvaged from the Roman Colosseum. Whenever I stepped on one of its pustulent brown blisters, the stuff let off a nasty hiss and I made a mental note to find out if color can cause nausea.
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