gardengrove420's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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lizetteratura's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I can appreciate a good classic but, I had the displeasure of reading this on my own (I love to suffer apparently), i feel like I'd like it much much more if i listened to the audiobook, my head hurts now

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counciloffrogs's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Dante’s writing is truly fascinating to me, but readers be warned that Inferno is densely packed with allusion. Not only biblical, or even just greek mythos-based, but 14th century Italians politics, popes and other real-world religious figures, and at points personal acquaintances of Dante. I would not recommend delving into this work without prior background studies. 
However, I do find it incredibly interesting the unique approach of analyzing real people in the context of their damnment to explain possible machinations of Hell. I enjoyed Inferno, even as a practicing pagan, which isn’t something I expected to be able to say about this book. 

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lin3han's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

4.5

I see a lot of comments talking about Dante roasting most of Florence. Just wanted to add that he’s doing so because he was exiled and this was a method of revenge and slander. It’s supposed to be tongue in cheek which Pinsky translated beautifully! 

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hellssecretary's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

reading this as translated version and i cant help but wonder how actually it is in the original italian version

dante's writing style factually fractures between giving too long not-so-important explantations and comparisons that can piss you off as you read it, and then not explaining important points and people even a bit, as if he thinks everyone already knows all of the secrets of every rich/important italian men had. jesus.

constant mentions of roman gods and legends and talks about them sometimes got me fully overthinking this entire book, mainly because while being based around God it casual mentions pagan gods, like this was all some multiverse and both God and those gods parallely had contolled the earth. like?! basis of the book is God, but yet all those roman god are mentioned, and aint the point of christianity - one god and no others?🤨
i aint christian enough to waste my sleep over it but damn that confused me

there many things that made no sense and were just outright weird and uncalled for and there were so many that i thought would be more complicated and explained better but were fully watered down, either by poem's boring style or translation (probably both)

would i have picked it up if it weren't for writing exam im having in three hours? probs no.
right now it seems really overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

i did like it more than most of books i read for school tho

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idreamofdragons's review against another edition

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dark funny informative fast-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Absolutely delightful! Dante and his stalwart companion Virgil trape  through a very hell, where we learn hard truths like the fact that devils play their farts like instruments and the place it has (in fact) already frozen  over. A short read that will clear away the years of pop culture distortion crusted on.

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