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snaugle's review against another edition
3.0
Huh. I have no idea what to think about this one. I thought the writing was beautiful, but it was so dense and it didn't hold my interest as much as I hoped it would.
lrn22's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book in a couple of days, once I started I was hooked. It was fun and well written and if it was a little less predictable, I would have given it 5 stars.
nerfherder86's review against another edition
4.0
A suspenseful story that winds its way through the streets of Prague, in both present day and the 1600's. I loved the dramatic opening: Nora is in shock over the bloody murder of her best friend Chris; the only witness, Chris' girlfriend (and Nora's other best friend) Adriane is catatonic with grief, unable to tell anyone what happened; and Nora's sweet boyfriend Max is missing, accused of committing the murder! Wow! But then we jump back a few months in time, and the book just slows down a lot. We get to know these characters from when they first met--Chris, Nora knew in childhood, before her older brother died in a car accident, so he knew her "before." But she meets Max in a special research class where the three of them are assisting a professor by translating 16th century letters from Latin. Nora gets caught up in the story of the subject of her letters, a young woman in Prague whose father is some kind of scientist/alchemist. Nora discovers clues, buried in those old manuscripts, often encoded in obscure Latin, to the possible existence of a mysterious machine that could lead to all sorts of supernatural knowledge, even of the divine. Nora gets entangled in the search for this machine as well as trying to prove Max's innocence; the two are intertwined, and Nora's and her friends' lives quickly are endangered by various thugs and secret society members who either want the machine for themselves, or want to stop anyone else from recreating it. I think I would have liked this book better had I not listened to it in audio, because I had to listen in many short bursts of time, so it became choppy for me and hard to follow the many flashbacks and forth in time; also the various Latin phrases were a little hard to understand in audio only, I think I would have liked better getting to read them myself. But I thought it was very well written. It is sort of a "Da Vinci Code for teens"; I would recommend it to readers who like mysteries and decoding ciphers, as well as historical novels and suspenseful action thrillers.
shelfquest's review against another edition
3.0
In The Book of Blood and Shadow, we follow Nora (hehe), a smart senior/Latin nerd at a prep school, and her three best friends. They land spots in a special study class to try to interpret a book that no one has been able to in the 400-some years since it was written. It turns out that an organization is keeping and eye on everyone who shows interest in the book, and once they start to make progress things start to heat up.
This is a really long book, and for most of it I thought that it was a really long book for such an okay story. It was an interesting read and the ending really picked up, but I feel like a lot could have been cut. There are several twists and surprises that keep the book moving and really engage the reader.
This is a really long book, and for most of it I thought that it was a really long book for such an okay story. It was an interesting read and the ending really picked up, but I feel like a lot could have been cut. There are several twists and surprises that keep the book moving and really engage the reader.
nematome's review against another edition
2.0
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. It’s tense and exhilarating and I felt immediately drawn into the story. As it opens, the main character Nora is reeling in the aftermath of the gruesome murder of her best friend Chris. And then we are immediately thrown back into the past, where we get to see just how amazing and complicated Nora's relationship with Chris really was. Instant grief! Instant Intrigue!
There’s also a very nice romance between Nora and the quiet, nerdy Max that’s neither simple nor easy.
“Max, on the other hand, was hard. Convoluted and cloudy, full of things I wasn’t supposed to ask and places I knew better than to go. With Max, I didn’t have to pretend.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Nora is a sympathetic, down to earth voice of reason, even as the plot of this book becomes more and more farfetched. She’s funny and dry, but she has a lot of understandably tender areas. Her grief is dealt with beautifully and never feels superficial.
“I had a copy of the photo tacked to the wall by my bed, and I had to leave it there, because it was a piece of him. That’s what death did – it turned trash into talismans. A CD he’d burned, a notebook he’d doodled in, a sweatshirt he’d worn: holy relics.”
The mysteries, while creepy and compelling to begin with, soon become convoluted and silly. The historical mystery centers on a manuscript that’s been studied and obsessed over for centuries by various scholars and fanatics, who have all failed to decipher it. Enter Nora, with her minor fluency in Latin, and a small group of undergrads and voilà!, suddenly it’s all being solved. Granted, there is an attempt to explain this later with a little “The Matrix”-type logic. But it’s still incredibly hard to believe.
The clues themselves are “hidden” in locations that it’s impossible to believe would remain undisturbed for centuries. For example, the first clue has been sewn into the lining of one of the obsessed-over books. Really? No one ever thought to x-ray the book or examine it further? It takes Nora about two minutes to dig it out. They’ve all also been conveniently left behind in parts of the world left untouched by development – so mass disasters, wars, new construction, and even just every day wear and tear are not issues. They are in code. Nora’s up-until-then completely absent Dad pops in randomly to solve the first one, and then fades back into non-existence. The codes are something like this:
In the third hour of the third day of the third year of the new millennium, I wrote this poem. THIRD.
I LIVE HERE IN A SPRAY TAN BOX OF ION SKIES.
Whoever solves this wins a prize!*
So, okay maybe Nora's codes are also in Latin. But still...would something like that really stump scholars for centuries? And there are so many other absurdities in this story. I mean, just as a hypothetical scenario...which may or may not have anything to do with this book…
If your best friend were murdered, and it turned out that a mysterious group of fanatical killers were to blame; if they were coming after you next; if the thing they wanted most was a dangerous, powerful machine…do you think the best option would be to track down every element of said machine for them and hand it over for their use in the tiny, foolish hope that they’d leave you alone after that? Just because it worked in Mission:Impossible doesn’t make it a good idea.
And in a related and equally hypothetical scenario…
If a boy arrived out of the blue, claiming to be the cousin of your best friend (even you admit that they look nothing alike); if that boy started showing up wherever you were – at your dorm room, at your brother’s grave, on your school trip…TO FRANCE; if you caught him in obvious lies several times; if he were conveniently fluent in several obscure languages and could beat off six armed men with a knife…would you trust this boy? With your life? Admittedly, he does have a “strange comfort in his voice”, so you know.
There are a few interesting questions raised by this book about faith vs. knowledge – Is it better to believe something without evidence or to demand proof? But none of them are really explored any further than the initial asking. The ending is confusing and frenetic, with “twists” that I saw coming a mile away and a bunch of loose ends that feel ham-fistedly tied together into sloppy knots. I really wonder if this was initially planned as a series, and then hastily converted into a stand-alone.
Perfect Musical Pairing
Underworld – Born Slippy
This song is so mellow and gorgeous at the beginning, with a slowly building tension that evolves into a full-on techno dance fest right around 1:16. By the end it’s almost unrecognizable (especially if you have the super long 9 minute version). At least with this song, you can just turn out your lights, break out your glow sticks and shout LAGER LAGER LAGER while pretending you’re back in the 90’s. I don’t want to give away too much about the ending of this book, but it’s hard to dance to melting human flesh.
*The prize is knowing that you’re a smarty pants!!
Also seen on The Readventurer
There’s also a very nice romance between Nora and the quiet, nerdy Max that’s neither simple nor easy.
“Max, on the other hand, was hard. Convoluted and cloudy, full of things I wasn’t supposed to ask and places I knew better than to go. With Max, I didn’t have to pretend.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Nora is a sympathetic, down to earth voice of reason, even as the plot of this book becomes more and more farfetched. She’s funny and dry, but she has a lot of understandably tender areas. Her grief is dealt with beautifully and never feels superficial.
“I had a copy of the photo tacked to the wall by my bed, and I had to leave it there, because it was a piece of him. That’s what death did – it turned trash into talismans. A CD he’d burned, a notebook he’d doodled in, a sweatshirt he’d worn: holy relics.”
The mysteries, while creepy and compelling to begin with, soon become convoluted and silly. The historical mystery centers on a manuscript that’s been studied and obsessed over for centuries by various scholars and fanatics, who have all failed to decipher it. Enter Nora, with her minor fluency in Latin, and a small group of undergrads and voilà!, suddenly it’s all being solved. Granted, there is an attempt to explain this later with a little “The Matrix”-type logic. But it’s still incredibly hard to believe.
The clues themselves are “hidden” in locations that it’s impossible to believe would remain undisturbed for centuries. For example, the first clue has been sewn into the lining of one of the obsessed-over books. Really? No one ever thought to x-ray the book or examine it further? It takes Nora about two minutes to dig it out. They’ve all also been conveniently left behind in parts of the world left untouched by development – so mass disasters, wars, new construction, and even just every day wear and tear are not issues. They are in code. Nora’s up-until-then completely absent Dad pops in randomly to solve the first one, and then fades back into non-existence. The codes are something like this:
In the third hour of the third day of the third year of the new millennium, I wrote this poem. THIRD.
I LIVE HERE IN A SPRAY TAN BOX OF ION SKIES.
Whoever solves this wins a prize!*
So, okay maybe Nora's codes are also in Latin. But still...would something like that really stump scholars for centuries? And there are so many other absurdities in this story. I mean, just as a hypothetical scenario...which may or may not have anything to do with this book…
If your best friend were murdered, and it turned out that a mysterious group of fanatical killers were to blame; if they were coming after you next; if the thing they wanted most was a dangerous, powerful machine…do you think the best option would be to track down every element of said machine for them and hand it over for their use in the tiny, foolish hope that they’d leave you alone after that? Just because it worked in Mission:Impossible doesn’t make it a good idea.
And in a related and equally hypothetical scenario…
If a boy arrived out of the blue, claiming to be the cousin of your best friend (even you admit that they look nothing alike); if that boy started showing up wherever you were – at your dorm room, at your brother’s grave, on your school trip…TO FRANCE; if you caught him in obvious lies several times; if he were conveniently fluent in several obscure languages and could beat off six armed men with a knife…would you trust this boy? With your life? Admittedly, he does have a “strange comfort in his voice”, so you know.
There are a few interesting questions raised by this book about faith vs. knowledge – Is it better to believe something without evidence or to demand proof? But none of them are really explored any further than the initial asking. The ending is confusing and frenetic, with “twists” that I saw coming a mile away and a bunch of loose ends that feel ham-fistedly tied together into sloppy knots. I really wonder if this was initially planned as a series, and then hastily converted into a stand-alone.
Perfect Musical Pairing
Underworld – Born Slippy
This song is so mellow and gorgeous at the beginning, with a slowly building tension that evolves into a full-on techno dance fest right around 1:16. By the end it’s almost unrecognizable (especially if you have the super long 9 minute version). At least with this song, you can just turn out your lights, break out your glow sticks and shout LAGER LAGER LAGER while pretending you’re back in the 90’s. I don’t want to give away too much about the ending of this book, but it’s hard to dance to melting human flesh.
*The prize is knowing that you’re a smarty pants!!
Also seen on The Readventurer
duckie7582's review against another edition
2.0
This book was not what I thought it was going to be. For some reason, I was under the impression it was going to be a supernatural story. It was overly long and so very boring. I automatically zoned out during the reading of the letters. There were so many plot twists that I stopped caring.
valhecka's review against another edition
5.0
FFUUUUUUUUUU.
I loved this but basically all I can think about right now is how I want to have Nora over so we can watch really dumb movies and talk about how much boys suck.
I loved this but basically all I can think about right now is how I want to have Nora over so we can watch really dumb movies and talk about how much boys suck.
theawkwardbookw's review against another edition
3.0
Want to see more bookish things from me? Check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCferU-BCL2dlFjWdD0rS75Q
Nora, her bestfriend Chris and boyfriend Max, stumbled across some shocking discoveries while working as Professor Huffman's assistants searching through old letters and manuscripts from 500 years ago. Then Chris is murdered, sending Nora and Chris' girlfriend, Adriane, to Prague in search of answers revolving around a strange machine called the Lumen Dei in the hopes of proving Max's innocence. They quickly realize that their are other people searching for this machine and the answers it holds, and they will stop at nothing to retrieve them.
I was left wanting more from this book. Although entertaining at times, it was a bit slow at some points that left me bored and unengaged with the story. It takes around 100 pages to fully get into the mystery and action of the book, which in my opinion was too long. There was a lot of set up and world building that needed to be done before hand, which I understand, but I was still bored. I liked most of the characters, but I honestly didn't care much for what was happening to them or the hardships they were going through. It was just a very average read for me.
Nora, her bestfriend Chris and boyfriend Max, stumbled across some shocking discoveries while working as Professor Huffman's assistants searching through old letters and manuscripts from 500 years ago. Then Chris is murdered, sending Nora and Chris' girlfriend, Adriane, to Prague in search of answers revolving around a strange machine called the Lumen Dei in the hopes of proving Max's innocence. They quickly realize that their are other people searching for this machine and the answers it holds, and they will stop at nothing to retrieve them.
I was left wanting more from this book. Although entertaining at times, it was a bit slow at some points that left me bored and unengaged with the story. It takes around 100 pages to fully get into the mystery and action of the book, which in my opinion was too long. There was a lot of set up and world building that needed to be done before hand, which I understand, but I was still bored. I liked most of the characters, but I honestly didn't care much for what was happening to them or the hardships they were going through. It was just a very average read for me.
jeannemurray3gmailcom's review against another edition
2.0
I really thought I would like this book, - but not the case.
I had trouble with this book. It was very slow at the beginning so I told myself I would give it 100 pages to get good before I gave up and quit. I spent about 5 days on the first 80 pages (I usually read a complete book every 2 or 3 days), and then decided that it was worth reading. I still took another few days to finish because it didn't hold me.
I am glad I read this book because it adds to my knowledge of religion and 16th century Prague. - and now I know what others are talking about when they mention this book.
I had trouble with this book. It was very slow at the beginning so I told myself I would give it 100 pages to get good before I gave up and quit. I spent about 5 days on the first 80 pages (I usually read a complete book every 2 or 3 days), and then decided that it was worth reading. I still took another few days to finish because it didn't hold me.
I am glad I read this book because it adds to my knowledge of religion and 16th century Prague. - and now I know what others are talking about when they mention this book.
krebs31's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0