When I electronically checked out Thunderstruck from my local library,  I started out listening to the audiobook edition, but then I read the rest of Larson’s tale when I accidentally checked out the e-book version.  An accident that ended up benefitting me, because I needed help in properly spelling out the names of the places that I’m going to write about in this post.

While I enjoyed Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts, this so far stands as my favorite Larson book.  I’m forever fascinated by the pre-World War One era world/Interwar period and the two tales feed into that fascination.  One tale involved electricity plus Guglielmo Marconi and another a very notorious murder case.  

As he tales the two tales, Larson gives descriptions of life in Edwardian era London that feel so alive and vivid, it left my mind buzzing with excitement.  I felt giddy at his mention of John Ruskin and Bloomsbury’s artistic culture plus groups I had never heard of such as the “Fitzroy Street Group“.  When writing about Marconi, Italian architecture would act as an omnipresent feature, what with mentions of “Santuario de Oropa” and “Farnesina Palace”.

Lastly, as with Devil and Beasts, Larson would dedicate some sentences to architecture from the Midwest, specifically the rather unique buildings of Coldwater, Michigan.

ETA 1-10-2015: Removed a sentence and tweaked another. It resembled too much of a review from Publisher’s Weekly on Amazon I read long after publishing this. We both wrote about how the book tied up the two plots together at the end. Although in my defense, it came to me as I listened/read the story.
ETA: Removed a sentence. I claimed that I was usually careful in checking on other people’s reviews before I published a post, but doubts made me remove it. I’m so mistake prone.