Death Cloud

Prompt:  Describe the mood of what you are reading.
Pages read: Wherever I left off last week-End (I took more time to read more and form an opinion)

Mood has been something I've been paying a lot of attention to recently.  I assume it is directly related to the symbolism project in which we were assigned to draw an object or scene which fully represents you.  This made me analyze myself a bit, and I dread being long-winded here but mood was a major factor in the drawing.  In music there is major and minor, and that's sufficient however, the same guidelines do not afflict human nature.  There are so many other moods to convey and feel.  Death Cloud exemplifies just a few of these emotions and tones throughout it's 300+ pages.

There is not a doubt that mystery and its parallels such as gloom, darkness, and curiousness all are the predominant moods in Death Cloud.  This assumption is obvious, but reading through this novel takes you along the ride, making the mystery vivid and legitimate. The gruesome nature of the way many have been dying adds the codependent darkness to the mystery, and gives the novel depth.  Curiousness is not formally classified as an emotion, it is more of a sensation relative to human nature.  If you are blessed enough to know about Sherlock Holmes and his adventures, you undoubtedly know of his inquisition and deductions.  Andrew Lane conveys this exquisitely through the duration of Death Cloud  and brings you along for the mystery, you feel as though you are Matty Arnatt, Sherlock's partner in crime.  You ask questions that Sherlock hasn't and you begin to wonder and become curious about the subject at hand.  Thus being the murders from the cloud of death.

Another prominent intuition this novel brings about is confusion.  Many would put "curiousness" and "confusion" in the same category, and while that may be just, it is not logical. And we all know how Sherlock requires logic over feeling.  Maybe I have failed to mention this, but this adaptation follows the young detective in his teenage years, which for everyone, even brilliant minds like his, ensues confusion.  Sherlock is unable to process his feelings for his tutor's pretty, badass daughter.  He is having a difficult time getting adults to listen to him and cannot understand why.  Holmes, whilst in the process of solving these brutal murders, is confused about morals and rules of society.  All of these are situations everyone finds themselves in, and thus confusion is a mood of the novel that strongly relates to its theme.