The Beekeeper's Apprentice (post 1)

I have a lot to say about this book so far, so I'm going to break it up into separate posts.

So a little background on the Beekeeper's Apprentice:
Sherlock Holmes has been retired for a decade and a half. The nineteenth century has ended-gas lamps are replaced by electric ones, horse drawn carriages are replaced by automobiles and telephones were beginning to circulate. Moreover, Europe is engulfed in the first world war...

After reading the summary on the sides of the cover, I realized that this book is going to be great. It pits Holmes against a younger woman who's trying to learn his trade and technique in solving cases. It'll be interesting to see how Holmes deals with this younger woman because from what I have read so far about Holmes, he doesn't seem too fond of women and he definitely doesn't trust them at all.

I've read the prelude and it really made me interested. I think I'm going to quote the phrases that occur before each chapter/section:
"To this spot a sort of aged philosopher had retired...Here he had built his refuge, being a little weary of interrogating men...."
So Holmes has moved out of London and I think he lives in the countryside. From Mary Russell's (who is the woman that Holmes encounters) prelude, she states that Holmes has been immortalized by writers and journalists of his time period. Holmes has had stories and novels written about him where authors are "plucking him up and setting him down in bizarre situations, putting impossible words into his mouth, and obscuring the legend still further." Watson has published his accounts of Sherlock Holmes and from there, Holmes has "become ethereal, dreamy. Fictional." Russell keeps mentioning Conan Doyle and this is making me believe that Holmes was actually real, I don't know if he is. I'll try and research more about that. From the prelude, Russell says she be offering a different perspective of Holmes. Watson had viewed Holmes from "a position of inferiority, and his perspective was always shaped by this." But now Russell is an equal to Holmes. She has the same kind of intuition as he does. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Lastly I leave the last lines of Russell's Prelude that I thought were very metaphorical and they make a lot of sense:
"To continue with the analogy, my perspective, my brush technique, my use of colour and shade, are all entirely different from his[Watson]. The subject is essentially the same; it is the eyes and the hands of the artist that change."