Rating: 
Summary: Holmes and Russell: a good combination
Review: I started reading this book with much doubt in my mind. The main reason was I could not believe Holmes would ever fall in love. Well, let me rephrase that. I could not believe Holmes would ever fall in love and actually show it. (I am a strong upholder of the "his parents killing each other" theory. Perhaps that has something to do with it.) I also doubted because I had just recently finished The 7% Solution, and I could not dream of any pastiache topping that. To be blunt, it didn't. If 7% was a 5, this book is a strong 4. I liked this story for several reasons, and disliked it for only one.Holmes was extremely believable. He was more mellowed, because he was older, but he had his spark. Also, he was not made into a thinking machine; he was simply a man who had high walls around himself. Also, if it is correct to say that Holmes did fall in love, he did it in a very Holmes style. I had no trouble accepting it. Mary Russel is an extremely likeable character. The reader is immediately fond of her, and cares about her wellfare. But it goes beyond that. We see right away why Holmes takes a fancy to her, and that is where the match lights the candle. The plot was very exciting. It had a great storyline which kept me on the edge of my seat. If my schedule permitted me to finish the book in one sitting, I would have. There was one reason why I did not like this book, and that is why I gave it a 4. Watson. He was a bafoon. Being a complete Edward Hardwicke fan (who is the ultimately perfect Watson to me), I found it hard to believe that Holmes would choose such an idiot for a friend. However, he wasn't clumsy, and he only appeared for 3 short intervals, so on the whole he didn't get in the way too much. Is this book The 7% Solution? No, but it is the closest thing to it that I've found yet. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawless
Review: This book is basically for anyone who loves to read. I read it at age 14, then 15, then again at 16. Both my mother and older sister loved it. Laurie King is a great author and her characters are incredible. I flinch when i see how Sherlock holmes is portrayed in other places! I was very sad when this book ended. I would recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: The Beekeeper's Apprentice
Review: Starting in Sussex Downs, England in 1915 the esulsive Sherlock Homes and the young, daring Mary Russel bump into eachother and start a binding friendship. Along with the friendship Russel starts path to becoming a partner. The book goes throught three cases saving the most exciting for last. This book introduces many familar characters including many new ones which make you think Sir Doyle wrote it himself. To tell you any more would rob you of the adventure that makes you keep turning pages until the very word has been read. This book makes a great addition to your mystery collection. If you like this book you'll love the Mary Russel books by Laurie R. King.
Rating: 
Summary: An Awesome book!
Review: I thought that The Beekeeper's Apprentice was a good book. From a scale of 1 to 5, I would give this book a 3 because It was interesting in most parts, but then in other parts, it wasn't that interesting. Its about Sherlock Holmes who found someone named Mary Russell that who relates in some way. Mary Russell has many problems in her life. Mary is an orphan, which Holmes basically adopts her. He teaches her many skills that are useful in their line of work. Mary has gone through so much in her life. Holmes made Mary feel at home and she becomes his partner. Someone tries to kill Holmes and his close friends. They even try to kill Mary Russell. Your question probably is, does Mary Russell live or die? Well, If you read this good book, you'll find out soon.
Rating:
Summary: Holmes is resurrected like never before!
Review: The Beekeeper's Apprentice, being the first of the Holmes/Russell novels, establishes the world of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes which will only be further developed and brought together in her later novels. Having read the first four (out of five so far), I have fallen in love with King's Holmes as much as I love Doyle's. We see Holmes in two very different stages of life, and with two very different people--As a matter of fact, he is portrayed -by- two totally different people. Mary Russell, the narrator and "author" of what fans call the Kanon, depicts Holmes in a very different way than Watson does in the Doyle Canon. Why? Because she sees him differently. Mentally, she is his equal. She is an audacious and modern woman, while Watson almost puts Holmes on a pedastol--and he is a strict Victorian gentlemen. No doubt their views on Holmes would be different. It's a shame that there are only second-person accounts of the Great Detective--Those who have read the Canon and the Kanon will long for a first-person tale from Holmes himself. This particular novel, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, is my favourite of the Kanon. The initial scene between Holmes and Russell is priceless, and is something I'll remember for the rest of my life. The narration is exquisitely charming and you can sense from how it is written that Mary Russell is a scholar, not a novelist (while Laurie R. King, if you read her other work from a third-person standpoint, is very much a storyteller--it just goes to show how far she goes for character and separating herself from Russell). Dialogue between Holmes and Russell is edgy and intelligent, and the chemistry between the two is phenomenal. Holmes's character remains full and intact, and we see sides of him Watson never was able to explore. Character traits that were two-dimensional in the Canon are brought into three dimensions in the Kanon, and we see precisely how human and real this genius of a man really is. The entire novel, as well as the rest of them, contains such a reality and charm that one can swear that the characters really existed. The only thing that I found to be strange was the trip to Jerusalem in the middle of the book. There didn't seem to be much of a point to it--However, at that time I didn't realize that the fifth book in the Kanon, O Jerusalem, takes us back to that point in Beekeeper's Apprentice and explains, in four hundred pages, precisely what went on there. It was left out of The Beekeeper's Apprentice because it was an entirely disassociated mystery. Even grizzled Baker Street Irregulars will enjoy this book--In fact, the people that seem to complain about the Holmes/Russell relationship the most are the people that haven't even read the Kanon at all. It's sure to charm even the hardest Holmes purist, and give others a glimpse into the humanity of Holmes, whereas the Doyle books were mainly about the adventure and the mystery. It's a brilliant start to an even better series, and I recommend it to those both familiar and unfamiliar with Sherlock Holmes.
Rating:
Summary: Audacious, brave, fun, and well-written
Review: Give Laurie King credit: it takes nerve to poach Sherlock Holmes, flesh him out into middle-age, and dump a fifteen-year-old whiz-kid misfit into his life. But boy, does she succeed. Mary Russell is every bit as Holmsian as Holmes, and she will not be gainsaid. Nor will she be bullied, patronized, or pawned off to the research end of their growing partnership. Holmes believes in her, and so does Laurie King, and this is where "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" goes from good to great. There's no silly tossing of heads or insults (well, not many), and although Holmes does go haring off into the undergrowth occasionally, there's always a logical reason for it. Smart, beautifully written,lush with detail, and absolutely believable, "Beekeeper's Apprentice" is one of the best reads around.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasant Fantasy
Review: I was entertained by this book most of the time but there were some tiresome sections. Much of it was quite repetitive and I felt like the editor needed to have another go at it. I dislike King's tendency (in this book, at least) to summarize what she is going to tell you, tell you, then tell you what she told you. This works for research papers and speeches, not for fiction. The entire Jerusalem trip was completely irrelevant to the plot. And all it did for the characters was that it made Russell feel "more Jewish". Okay, fine. But how did that affect her in the rest of the book? Seemingly not at all. Why send us on a journey and then tell us nothing about it, give it no relevance? My other beef was about Watson. Why make him a doddering idiot? I felt that, more than anything, disrespected the original stories. Maybe she felt she had to make him stupid so that Mary could be set up as Holmes's new partner. But surely that could have been done without besmirching poor Watson. He is supposed to have written the Holmes stories. If so, then how can he be such a dimwit? (Okay, I admit, I'm a Watson fan.) Frankly, it would be nice to have an important supporting character in the book. Lestrade didn't really do a lot, either, though at least he wasn't a moron. Mycroft was vague and helpful. All that being said, and I'm just trying to temper all these "It's perfect!!" reviews, it was fun to contemplate Holmes in a slightly different time and place, and as being not only brilliant, but human and caring. I liked Mary Russell, though she turned into a big drama queen at the end. (Another problem I had - she's been through so much in her life, but one minor bullet wound and she sulks like a Calvin Klein model? It didn't fit!) Overall, though critical, I enjoyed it and plan to read the next book in the series. After that, if there's not too much Watson-bashing, we'll see.
Rating:
Summary: Is Doyle still alive?
Review: That's what I thought as I read the first chapter of The Beekeeper's Apprentice. King does an incredible job of bringing out the character traits of the greatest detective in England, while adding a twist all her own. Russell is a perfect foil for Holmes. On top of it, King draws the reader into the story with her wonderful descriptions. Portions of her books read almost like prose poetry. I can't say it enough -- pick up this book, and then realize you can't live without the rest of the series and grab them too!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: Although probably not for Holmesian purists, for the rest of us this book is absolutely wonderful. It gives insights into the character of the great detective that you never saw with Conan Doyle's work, as well as introducing the beautiful character of Mary Russell. Read it, read the rest in the series, then come back to it and appreciate it even more!
Rating:
Summary: Rekindling a lifelong love affair
Review: Like Mary Russell, I first met Sherlock Holmes when I was young. My talented English teacher began the Spring semester's reading assignments with the Hound of the Baskervilles. The long-forgotten author of the preface to the edition of Hound that we used wished that, if this was our first Sherlockian story, it would be the beginning of a lifelong love affair. I was smitten indeed and read more of the Canon. I was not pleased by many the pastiches I've encountered through the years--until this one. It shows Holmes in a new light without (in my opinion) straying far from Doyle's (Watson's?) writings. Writers of romance could take a hint from King--Holmes and Russell's attraction to one another is so alluring because it's conveyed so subtly and deftly. The scenes in which Holmes and Russell must pretend to feud finally made me "get" why romances so often portray couples at odds with one another before they discover a shared passion. I devoured this novel and the next two in the series. THE MOOR is sitting at my elbow and the voices of Holmes and Russell are cleverly wooing me away from the novel I picked up to read in the interim...
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