Reviews

The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara

dunforde's review

adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

4.25

brigitte's review against another edition

I gotta sit with this one for awhile before I’ll know the rating….

whiteraven191's review

slow-paced

4.0

icvelx's review

sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Racism, and Rape

nataliecg's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

greathornedowl's review

informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

eveningreverie's review

reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.25

Really cool premise with lacking execution. Temporally-fragmented narrative seemed purposeless besides a couple of rather unnecessary twists. A sense of time that at times stretches indomitably long and at times condenses such vast swaths of time into a footnote. A lot of the time, I didn’t care for a few of the simultaneous stories. I get what they’re doing in the context of the narrative (I.e.

I get it, she has a clarinet, maybe these are a real-time representation of her dad’s tangential thoughts

), but more often than not it feels fundamentally disconnected from itself. There’s little here that couldn’t have been successfully (or more so) told chronologically. 

harureads's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

A beautiful exploration of the human life, and our possible future with the climate (political and literal) we are currently living in. I did feel like the lives of King and Athena did mirror each other’s in this complex way because of how their situations and personalities drove them to take any of the steps they did.

Although, one thing I absolutely did not like was how the book describes anything pertaining to the actual people. Visceral explanations of the smell of their sweat and breath, it’s felt weird and out of place every time. And although the book aimed to show the evils of caste system and capitalism I felt like it ended up not doing either sufficiently and had it not been for the characters, the story would have been fairly bland.

fishky's review

4.0

I guess this book was like if Steve Jobs was an immigrant proxy for intergenerational family trauma and then Margaret Atwood starts ghostwriting chapters at random. Still cried at the end tho

krobart's review

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75