THE PHANTOM OF MANHATTAN

This was a bizarre book from start to finish. The preface was unnecessarily hard on the original novel while being way too kind to the Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of the original novel (which I am a fan of, so I'm not saying that from a place of malice). Yes, the facts don't line up because he was writing mostly fiction??? Like Leroux was just trying to drum up attention for the opera house because it was in disrepair, he was not trying to write a whole fucking mystery novel. Sure, it's a 3/5 novel overall, but don't try to nitpick it for things that it was not originally trying to do.

The entire setup for Erik making it to Coney Island and eventually becoming rich is believable enough to be hand-waived. I'll take it. However, the rest of the book after the introduction is weirdly paced and stilted. I feel like we had no real time with the phantom outside of "here is how I got rich. I will now be sad about Christine for two sentences." The reporters are fun and all but the phantom should probably have more development.

Because we spend so little time with the main characters it makes no fuckin sense that Pierre would want to go with the phantom. He literally doesn't even know the phantom, why the fuck would he want to live with him instead of the guy who raised him???

Fucking wild. At least the shooting at the end makes sense, unlike Lord Andy's Love Never Dies trash fire. Both Forsyth and Lord Andy need to face prosecution for the crimes that are everything to do with this novel.

Hey, at least Raoul being impotent via dubiously logical injury to his groin arteries after a gunshot is infinitely more funny than "this kid is musical, he must be my kid"