The World of Charles Dickens by Barry Falls – Laurence King – 1000 pieces

I had a great time with this puzzle, it was so much fun! Puzzles with a lot going on or a lot of buildings are not usually my thing, but this one was really entertaining. This is another puzzle from a swap with Penny; it’s so great that we don’t always have the same taste in puzzle images, because this way I get to do puzzles I wouldn’t normally go for and sometimes find out that even if the image isn’t something that connects with me that it can still be great fun to assemble.

This is only my third Laurence King puzzle, and the first one I’ve done that was manufactured in China. The previous ones I’ve done, Pop Art Puzzle and The World of Frankenstein were both manufactured in The Netherlands and were of excellent quality. A friend and fellow puzzle blogger from Europe told me about the bad quality of this brand’s puzzles that were made in China, so I’ve steered clear of those and only bought ones I could be certain where they were made. That being said, even though this was made in China it wasn’t too bad. We’ll start with the pros; the fit was exceptional (stay tuned for one of my famous puzzle standing up pictures), the finish was matte and had a wonderful hand feel, there were a good variety of piece shapes, and the image reproduction was excellent. On the negative side; this puzzle was secondhand from Penny, so with her disassembling it to put back in the box, the pieces showed that the chipboard used was far less superior – the tabs had already begun to fray and part of the image was delaminating. At the corners of many pieces the image was coming up and it made my usual post completion puzzle massage less satisfying as I didn’t want to cause any more damage by making the image come off even more.

Overall I’d say it was a good quality puzzle, but I much prefer the Netherlands made puzzles from this brand, they have the same quality as a Jumbo puzzle with an almost waxy feel to the finish and the much nicer chipboard. Just my opinion of course, please don’t come for me.

The image is so detailed with so many things to see, this is just one little section with many characters set in London. I’ll be honest and tell you that I have never read any of Dickens’ work, so I have no idea who these people are or anything about them. But you don’t need to know anything about the author (which I didn’t) to enjoy this puzzle, it’s just an entertaining image that makes for a fun assembly.

On the back of the very large (almost too big if you ask me) poster is this synopsis of Dickens’ life, with a legend of the characters and places represented in the artwork. It tells a little bit about each of his books, and shows you the people and places he wrote about. Very cool! I feel like I learned something after reading this, and that’s always a good thing in my book.

No one asked for it, but I did it anyway cause it makes me so very happy – puzzle standing up in the Stacey Stance picture!