Among First 2 novels of Holmes ,I liked it very much. Readers will definitely get surprised at the end(only if they didn't heard about the claimax)

I had expected much more from this, but to no avail.

The Hound of the Baskervilles
This took me way too long to read. I started in late August, and didn't finish until early December. I'm blaming school, but I also find that the novel-length Sherlock Holmes stories can be quite boring. The story in itself was interesting, but it felt a bit dragged out. Honestly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was a bit shorter and a bit more fast paced says the girl who spent nearly four months reading the book

The Valley of Fear
Read only part one and the epilogue. From my experience with A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four, narratives that aren't Watson's or Holmes's are extremely boring and dragged out. I don't care how much it explains the reasons behind whatever has been done, I just want to read about Holmes and Watson tbh.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is a classic on its own right; it's a fast thriller with a few red herrings, a touch of comic relief, and a very satisfying conclussion.
The Valley of Fear is similar in pace and tone, but I thought the second part was a bit long and quite anticlimatic, since the murder case was solved in the first half.
Well worth a read, nevertheless.

I wish that we could do half stars on this site as I've rated this as 3.5 stars.

The hound of Baskervilles is a story of fear and legends mixing together to create a horror stricken fear of the Moores during the night. Of family connections and legacies. Another classic Sherlock Holmes story of mystery and cunning detective work. It's a tale of discovery and wonder and a masterpiece of fiction that I really enjoyed reading and found myself glued to the pages, wanting to know what happened next.

The valley of fear is a classic locked room mystery from Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Working together with the local police force and the members of the household, both Holmes and Watson have to figure out how the killer got in and then disappeared again when the house was locked up tight with no way out.
As much as I normally enjoy locked room mysteries, I just couldn't get in to this story very much nor could I really see the point of the second half where it tells you the history of the man who is supposedly was murdered in his own home. I often found my mind drifting away from the book and it took me a little longer to read it, so it was because of this story that my rating is not a full four stars.

Am I the only one who is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. I have re-readed the complete collection more than 10 times. n   Am I normal!!!!n

No es lo mejor que leí de Arthur Conan Doyle. Me pareció una prosa lenta y que no terminaba de definir hacia dónde quería ir. Supe, desde que se presentó en el relato, quién era el asesino, y eso no me pasó con otros relatos de Sherlock, por lo que el resto de la novela fue en picada para mí.

Hound of the Baskervilles is the perfect Scooby Doo mystery. Scooby Doo plots start with a visit to a creepy secluded location. The gang finds that the locals are being terrified by a monster of some sort. After some ominous warnings that they should leave immediately, they have an encounter or two with the monster and then figure out that someone took advantage of a local legend in order to frighten everyone away so that they could claim some land or steal a fortune. That is precisely the plot of Hound of the Baskervilles. All that is missing is the villain saying "I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling Sherlock Holmes!"

The second half of this collected edition is the Valley of Fear, the fourth and last of Doyle's Holmes novels. Doyle uses the same structure he used in Study in Scarlet, in which the first half of the novel has Holmes solve a murder and then the second half reveals the killer's elaborate backstory. Again like Study in Scarlet the backstory is set in the United States. This one involves a corrupt secret society that engages in extortion and murder. I suspect Doyle used this structure in order to write novels about characters and situations other than those of his Sherlock Holmes series and the wrap them in a Sherlock envelope to satisfy his fans.

I think what's most unexpected is the large sections where Holmes is not actually present in the story. Both stories are narrated from Watson's perspective and by the end of Valley of Fear, we are transported into a prequel far removed in time and space from the deductive duo. Doyle's writing is in tune with his medical background, the descriptions detailed and the delivery direct. There is also a hint of the romantic wrapped around these adventure tales but nothing that distracts from the main investigative prowess of Holmes. He is a character so imitated that you know him before turning the page. The know it all attitude, reluctance to share his plans and his eccentricities are all here in the original, although he's far more civil than the modern adaptations of Lawrie's House and Cumberbatch. Really enjoyed the long deductive passages of reasoning expertly cliff hung by Holmes reluctance to stop and translate for the layman.

My continuing Sherlockian journey has reached the big hitters.

It was alright, yet I guess, I should've picked a different book regarding Sherlock Holmes for my iniciation to the Sir Doyle's work. The Hound of the Baskervilles was good, but I expected a bit more of the main character to, indeed, be a part of the story, however, Mr Holmes' presence is rather implicit. On the other hand, The Valley of Fear is a masterpiece and I enjoyed every minute of reading it.

Definitivt den bästa av de längre berättelserna om mästerdetektiven Sherlock Holmes. Om det är min favorit av alla berättelser, långa som korta, är svårt att säga. Läste den för en evighet sedan, troligen på mellan- eller högstadiet. Det var mycket som flög ovanför mitt huvud då, nu känns det som att mer saker ploppar fram och skapar en djupare upplevelse.

Många av de längre romanerna har en inskjuten berättelse som dramatiserar förklaringen av fallet som lösts. Denna har inte det, vilket är ett plus i kanten. Jag läser berättelserna om Sherlock Holmes och Dr Watson, för att träffa just de två karaktärerna.

The Hound of the Baskervilles   
3 stars*

''The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.''

I read this a while ago and didn't enjoy it very much. It was a bit hard to get through this one and it wasn't memorable for me. I was excited, because I liked the screen adaptation of this book in BBC Sherlock, but it was an okay read at best.

The Valley of Fear
3,5 stars*

''Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the men and women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the cloud above them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of the year 1875.''

This book was told in two parts: first what had happened, and then how and where all this originated and developed. The first half was quite nice. It was fast-paced, intriguing and it had some funny scenes. However, the second half was not as enjoyable to me. It is set 20 years before the main events and takes place somewhere else. It just failed to keep my attention and just wasn't as interesting as the first half. I feel like there were a lot of unnecessary details, which were a bit boring to read through. I did like how it was all tied together, so 3,5 stars in conclusion.