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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
i'm going to be thinking about this one for a while. the horror of childhood and being owned, not being able to trust your own eyes. having to move on without any kind of closure. the yawning void.
short read, wonderfully creepy and thoughtful.
short read, wonderfully creepy and thoughtful.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
I feel like such a fake sometimes. I say stuff like, "I like eerie, atmospheric books," and think that there's nothing inherently wrong with an unreliable narrator or open endings. And yet when I read a story like this that has all three I'm just left thinking: wow, this was not for me!
Definitely a unique, lonely, and melancholic book. Kind of gave me James and the Giant Peach/Coraline/Series of Unfortunate Events-kind of vibes with respect to children in strange environments and an innate distrust of adults, especially parents. It's not necessarily a coming-of-age story so much as an adult man reflecting back on an unusual period of his childhood, but it feels like so little dramatic action is actually happening that I never felt unease or tension. It also has a fairly abrupt ending, which really got me because the last twenty pages or so of the physical book version is actually an excerpt from a different book by the same author, so I was holding several pages thinking I had that much more to go when I really didn't.
This is another candidate for my "Goodreads should give us half-star increments" campaign, because I'm treating this as a 2.5 rounded up for uniqueness. I try to think who I would recommend a book to at the end of my reviews, but this one is tricky. I guess if you're looking for a sort of Rorschach test situation where two people can look at the same thing and come up with wildly different interpretations, this would be a good one to consider; would be fun to do in a book club situation.
Definitely a unique, lonely, and melancholic book. Kind of gave me James and the Giant Peach/Coraline/Series of Unfortunate Events-kind of vibes with respect to children in strange environments and an innate distrust of adults, especially parents. It's not necessarily a coming-of-age story so much as an adult man reflecting back on an unusual period of his childhood, but it feels like so little dramatic action is actually happening that I never felt unease or tension. It also has a fairly abrupt ending, which really got me because the last twenty pages or so of the physical book version is actually an excerpt from a different book by the same author, so I was holding several pages thinking I had that much more to go when I really didn't.
This is another candidate for my "Goodreads should give us half-star increments" campaign, because I'm treating this as a 2.5 rounded up for uniqueness. I try to think who I would recommend a book to at the end of my reviews, but this one is tricky. I guess if you're looking for a sort of Rorschach test situation where two people can look at the same thing and come up with wildly different interpretations, this would be a good one to consider; would be fun to do in a book club situation.
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If you expect this to be like the author’s other works, you will not like it. Don’t read like a fantasy novel. Read it like a mystery novel. It’s a completely new kind of mystery novel and in that lens an amazing book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Murder
Minor: War
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Enjoyable in a Mievillian way, but feels like he is a bit constrained and not totally suited to writing a piece of this length (ie not a door-stopper). Not weird enough by half if you are expecting his usual treatment. I agree with those who have said there is a gothic tone to this novella. There is also the air of an allegory or parable about it, but if so I’m not sure what it is an allegory of or what the moral of the parable is. Anyway, I imagine that Mieville would eschew such classifications.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
This reminded me a lot of Gene Wolfe's Peace, though I think this suffers from not being written by Gene Wolfe. There's a lot happening beneath the surface in this one, and it slipped past me, which is maybe my fault and maybe Mieville's fault.
It deserves another read, though I don't know when that will be. This was my second time trying this novella, as the first time it didn't grab me. It's a really interesting novella, or at least I think it is. It may be a very bad novella.
Which is kind of the problem here. It's why I'm leaving it unrated. It's either one of Mieville's most complex and deceptive works, or it's just a concept done poorly.
It deserves another read, though I don't know when that will be. This was my second time trying this novella, as the first time it didn't grab me. It's a really interesting novella, or at least I think it is. It may be a very bad novella.
Which is kind of the problem here. It's why I'm leaving it unrated. It's either one of Mieville's most complex and deceptive works, or it's just a concept done poorly.
2017 Hugos nominee for Best Novella, and I honestly don't know what to make of this book. It's purposefully cryptic and vague, and there's a haziness of identity throughout -- "the boy" vs. "I" vs. "you", our narrator blurring pronouns in his retelling -- and the chronology see-saws back and forth, and yet that wasn't even the problem. I could follow that easily enough. Where This Census-Taker lost me was the meandering prose and a lack of direction, and that it so stubbornly refuses categorisation and doesn't seem to know what to do with itself either. It's often been categorised as horror, but it's more vaguely unsettling than truly horrific. It's not really the tale of a boy being whisked off to a mystical new profession, either, because you don't get enough information about his future. It's not entirely a murder mystery either. So what in the world is it?
So I really struggled with keeping my interest, and literally right when the story felt like it had picked up and I was finally going to get some answers, then... it ends. I was caught off-guard because the last chunk of the book is a preview of another novella, so I didn't realise I was at the end -- "Wait, it's over already? BUT I WANTED TO FIND OUT ABOUT XYZ."
People differ between calling it a novella or a novel, and thus I think it straddles that line uncomfortably; it's too long to be satisfying short fiction, and it's too short to be a fully-fleshed-out tale either, and so it's disappointing on both fronts.
There are some intriguing points here; the magical touches of the narrator's father's magical keys, the hints of worldbuilding we're not seeing, a past war. In its gloomy remote setting & claustrophobic family relationships & maybe-guilty maybe-not & a too-eloquent narrator looking back on his unreliable past, it actually oddly reminded me of [b:His Bloody Project|25694617|His Bloody Project|Graeme Macrae Burnet|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433870239s/25694617.jpg|45524554], too. But in the end, there's just not enough.
And though I'm normally quite game for Miéville's prose, there were huge chunks here where the writing got on my nerves for being too goddamn flowery and self-indulgent. This is a perfect example of the prose that I hated, sounding like an MFA student gone haywire:
Ultimately, not for me. I need more plot, more meat, less vaguenesses. You can't just coast on atmosphere alone, and I wish those meandering philosophical side-bars had been edited down.
I almost gave up halfway through but kept stubbornly chugging along because I was hoping to unravel some of those mysteries, but it ends underwhelmingly and without resolution, too, as if it's simply run out of steam.
So I really struggled with keeping my interest, and literally right when the story felt like it had picked up and I was finally going to get some answers, then... it ends. I was caught off-guard because the last chunk of the book is a preview of another novella, so I didn't realise I was at the end -- "Wait, it's over already? BUT I WANTED TO FIND OUT ABOUT XYZ."
People differ between calling it a novella or a novel, and thus I think it straddles that line uncomfortably; it's too long to be satisfying short fiction, and it's too short to be a fully-fleshed-out tale either, and so it's disappointing on both fronts.
There are some intriguing points here; the magical touches of the narrator's father's magical keys, the hints of worldbuilding we're not seeing, a past war. In its gloomy remote setting & claustrophobic family relationships & maybe-guilty maybe-not & a too-eloquent narrator looking back on his unreliable past, it actually oddly reminded me of [b:His Bloody Project|25694617|His Bloody Project|Graeme Macrae Burnet|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433870239s/25694617.jpg|45524554], too. But in the end, there's just not enough.
And though I'm normally quite game for Miéville's prose, there were huge chunks here where the writing got on my nerves for being too goddamn flowery and self-indulgent. This is a perfect example of the prose that I hated, sounding like an MFA student gone haywire:
Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town over a river or a road or a tangle of railway tracks or a quarry, or to attach an island to another island or to the continent from which it strains. The dream of a bridge is of a woman standing at one side of a gorge and stepping out as if her job is to die, but when her foot falls it meets the ground right on the other side. A bridge is just better than no bridge but its horizon is gaplessness, and the fact of itself should still shame it. But someone had built on this bridge, drawn attention to its matter and failure. An arrogance that thrilled me. Where else could those children live?
Ultimately, not for me. I need more plot, more meat, less vaguenesses. You can't just coast on atmosphere alone, and I wish those meandering philosophical side-bars had been edited down.
I almost gave up halfway through but kept stubbornly chugging along because I was hoping to unravel some of those mysteries, but it ends underwhelmingly and without resolution, too, as if it's simply run out of steam.