The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerized Girl’s last book of the The Athena Club trilogy is a puzzle to me. I don’t understand why certain choices were made. There are major spoilers ahead, so this is for only those fans who have read the third book.

First, the theme of men being useless or evil continues. All the people who are sacrificed midway through the book are men. Later, some of the women heroes comment that it’s good that those men died. Yeesh. The only “good” men are useless men. Dr. Watson is an imbecile who ignores the advice of the wise characters and listens to boys, attacks a house, and is wounded and out of the action. Sherlock Holmes is incapacitated. When he starts to recover, I don’t recognize the character he is so bland. And in his final moment of heroism he is shot by Mary? He is a device for Mary Jekyll, not a character. Only hedonistic Dorian Gray comes off as any male of any worth, and Goss champions the character because of author, Oscar Wilde. Has she read the story of Dorian Gray? I don’t understand her support of males who tortured women in their novels: Dracula and Dorian Gray.

At the end of the novel, the Egyptian queen is mesmerizing everyone’s worst nightmares. The entire Athena Club except Diana and Laura are under its spell. In effect, the Athena Club (except Diana) are useless. In Mary’s case, she shoots Sherlock. True, there’s an earlier scene where Mary, Cat, and Justine come together and nearly save the day. That scene felt earned. This final scene makes the Athena Club look like the Keystone Kops. Meanwhile, Diana and Laura kill the main villain. Laura is such a one-note character, I’m not sure why she was in the novel at all. She travels across Europe with Lucinda to show up to save the day? Disappointing. Furthermore, Laura should have done the dirty work she assigned to Diana. There’s no reason, other than Diana is a main character and Laura is not, that Diana couldn’t have used the gun.

The final good-byes to the members of the club was also a letdown. Mary’s is fine, Diana doesn’t really get one, and Cat’s payoff every reader knew since the first novel. She’s been hawking her side line of novels every fifty pages. The worst of all endings belong to Beatrice and Justine. Beatrice accepts her fate in life as a poisonous woman, never to find human comfort. Wait a minute. Beatrice is a scientist. Scientists solve problems. No scientist worth their salt would ever give up. Why does Beatrice passively succumb to her condition?

And then Justine. Dear God, what a turnaround. She is the principled member of the Athena Club. She’s the team’s balanced conscience in books one and most of two. In this novel, she ends up with Dorian Gray. Opposites attract, but usually not at a moral level, unless she wasn’t that moral to begin with. A compromised Justine is the impression I’m left with at the end of the novel. She’s changed to become worldly and embraced her Dorian side: self-indulgent, inward focused, and a cad. Perhaps not what the author intended, but with so little character development of Dorian Gray, how could the reader not assume this is what happened to her?

The beginning of the series, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, started off as clever and entertaining. Flipping the gender of some (Jekyll / Hyde) and following the story lines of others (Beatrice / Catherine) was inspired. Even Frankenstein using Justine’s body as the bride was a fantastic idea. The true villain of the first novel was a great revelation, but it portended things to come. People forget the villainy of the monster of Frankenstein, unlike its movie counterpart, and Strange Case leans into it. Unfortunately, flipping other heroic characters as villains (Van Helsing) or non-entities (Harker) in the following two novels doesn’t work as it did the first one. Flipping villains (Dracula, Dorian Gray) also doesn’t work. There’s no point to it. And still, existing villains (Moriarity) remain evil. Why?

There was great promise at the end of Strange Case. I wish the author had continued on its path.