Book review: Rotherweird and Wyntertide

This is a book that I'd seen a few times in Waterstones and considered reading, despite it looking somewhat like a setup; when I found a copy in Oxfam it seemed ineviatble that I'd buy it, and so I did. Ultimately though my first impressions were correct; for a Goodreads review saying much the same, see here.

Firstly - but as you go on it becomes the most annoying feature - too much of the book is a crossword puzzle. Perhaps if you look crosswords, and the author undoubtedly does, that's cute; but I don't, so it is annoying (Calx Bole vs Calle Box is probably the most annoying). The problem this links too is that not only is the town of Rotherweird in some alternate fantasy universe but the entire plot is off there too, with bizarre trail-of-clues stuff that really doesn't make much sense.

There is, as expected, the cast of lovable and hissable eccentric characters with various entertaining properties but somehow... it is all too cartoonish? Or too constructed? More the latter: it is as though the author has had the idea of an anagram trail, and written backwards from there, without any great interest in his characters.

I didn't like the idea that (plot spoilers ahead) the mixing spot conferred immortality, and people knew that. Because, how would you know, without living those centuries? There's a bit with mayflies, but mayflies die from lack of food (no?) and the mixing spot merely confers lack-of-aging, so it wouldn't have made the mayflies last. Am I being too picky?

I did finish Rotherweird. And I just about finished part two, Wyntertide (sample review I quote sympathetically from: there were too many characters who all knew different things, and trying to keep track of who knew what was not only impossible, but also boring; I'm fine with the word "brio" though); but I'm not going to pick up part three.