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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beautiful, poetic, prose novel about two little girls who develop a strong bond and what happens next. This is a frustrating book too because it has an unfinished feeling at the end and because some critical components, for example the "promise" one of the girls make, seem to disappear somewhere in translation. One star off for the enigmatic translation.
The Ice Palace is a hauntingly bleak novel about coping with the loss of a friend. Set in winter, the cold and forsaken landscapes mirror that of the story.
I enjoyed this book only up to a point.
The writing style is quite beautiful and it doesn't surprise me to hear that the author was a poet. I'm quite fond of poetry-inspired prose full of vague airy lines, although I don't believe this would be everyone's cup of tea.
The reason why I don't give this book more stars is, in a vague way, related to the writing.
It's because of the pedophilia vibes this whole novel seems to irradiate. Maybe some will disagree with me, but I thought the start of the novel was way too charged, with far too many comments about them losing themselves in one another, wanting to be together, wanting to touch each other, be each other, and even at one point locking the door to the bedroom and getting naked together.
Now, I get that these comments are mostly meant to be metaphors about life and death and all that jazz, but it's still weird. This is a novel about two 11-year-old girls written by a grown man. And don't give me any of that "lolita" crap. The girls in this story are literal children and the way they're written makes you think they're about to have sex at more than one point.
Nothing sexual actually happens between them, which is why I don't give this a lesser rating, but boy did reading this weird me out.
The writing style is quite beautiful and it doesn't surprise me to hear that the author was a poet. I'm quite fond of poetry-inspired prose full of vague airy lines, although I don't believe this would be everyone's cup of tea.
The reason why I don't give this book more stars is, in a vague way, related to the writing.
It's because of the pedophilia vibes this whole novel seems to irradiate. Maybe some will disagree with me, but I thought the start of the novel was way too charged, with far too many comments about them losing themselves in one another, wanting to be together, wanting to touch each other, be each other, and even at one point locking the door to the bedroom and getting naked together.
Now, I get that these comments are mostly meant to be metaphors about life and death and all that jazz, but it's still weird. This is a novel about two 11-year-old girls written by a grown man. And don't give me any of that "lolita" crap. The girls in this story are literal children and the way they're written makes you think they're about to have sex at more than one point.
Nothing sexual actually happens between them, which is why I don't give this a lesser rating, but boy did reading this weird me out.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes