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3.06 AVERAGE
3.06 AVERAGE
promising, with lots of great faerie detail but ultimately bogged down with the selfish preoccupations of its bourgeois non-faerie characters. I skipped over a lot of indulgent rambling but liked the book
I really kind of hated this book. The concept sounded amazing, and I really wanted to like it. And the author's a really good writer if you look at individual sentences. But the story itself kind of went nowhere and there wasn't a single character I connected with or cared about at all. Sort of reminded me why I stopped reading literary fiction.
The Great Night is a wonderfully strange trip of a novel. Though it is drenched in magic and the fantastic it is often pulled down into the mundane world where it becomes another enthralling but ultimately useless curiosity and distraction.
Frequently startling and dark in equal measure it draws the reader into its world for one night through offering a glimpse into the range of characters who are grounded and familiar but still somewhat surreal. While the fantastic and magic are the elements that really drive the narrative it is the heavy human reality of characters that make it a compelling and satisfying read.
Frequently startling and dark in equal measure it draws the reader into its world for one night through offering a glimpse into the range of characters who are grounded and familiar but still somewhat surreal. While the fantastic and magic are the elements that really drive the narrative it is the heavy human reality of characters that make it a compelling and satisfying read.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
While it's not [b:The Children's Hospital|53169|The Children's Hospital|Chris Adrian|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388312470s/53169.jpg|209645], it was still an engaging novel. I'm a sucker for modern Shakespeare retellings and i thought this was a pretty good one.
No.
Just... no.
There's way way too much going on here; I thought I would be reading a modern retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night Dream, not this.... mess. There's a huge focus on the backstories of the characters. Tons of flashbacks to their lives that led them to this point.
But I didn't care. They were mostly unlikeable and I wasn't especially connected to any of them. They were all happy to throw around slurs against trans, queer, and neurodivergent people. The main gay character had OCD, but I didn't really understand how it fit into the story and it honestly felt like such a stereotypical case (all physical compulsions of cleaning, very very little touching on the obsessive thoughts0 that I just wanted it to stop.
There's so much sexual content, which perhaps isn't unwelcome in a Midsummer retelling, but I felt most of it had no purpose. In general, I don't seek out books with sexual content and this was just egregious and often gross.
The Rude Mechanicals were in, maybe, four chapters, but they were built up so much that it just added another unnecessary layer of complexity to this story.
By far the best part of this book was Oberon and Titania and their dead changeling child. But there was a ton of content about them in the past and not enough in the present of the story. I would much have preferred to read a piece solely focused on them during the whole debacle. I liked them much better than Henry, Will, and Molly.
While there were some moments of solid world building and I enjoyed setting it in Buena Vista in San Francisco, a park I've been to several times, the characters and their heavy and overwhelming backstories drew the whole piece into a downward spiral. The disjointed nature of the story didn't help much either.
Just... no.
There's way way too much going on here; I thought I would be reading a modern retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night Dream, not this.... mess. There's a huge focus on the backstories of the characters. Tons of flashbacks to their lives that led them to this point.
But I didn't care. They were mostly unlikeable and I wasn't especially connected to any of them. They were all happy to throw around slurs against trans, queer, and neurodivergent people. The main gay character had OCD, but I didn't really understand how it fit into the story and it honestly felt like such a stereotypical case (all physical compulsions of cleaning, very very little touching on the obsessive thoughts0 that I just wanted it to stop.
There's so much sexual content, which perhaps isn't unwelcome in a Midsummer retelling, but I felt most of it had no purpose. In general, I don't seek out books with sexual content and this was just egregious and often gross.
The Rude Mechanicals were in, maybe, four chapters, but they were built up so much that it just added another unnecessary layer of complexity to this story.
By far the best part of this book was Oberon and Titania and their dead changeling child. But there was a ton of content about them in the past and not enough in the present of the story. I would much have preferred to read a piece solely focused on them during the whole debacle. I liked them much better than Henry, Will, and Molly.
While there were some moments of solid world building and I enjoyed setting it in Buena Vista in San Francisco, a park I've been to several times, the characters and their heavy and overwhelming backstories drew the whole piece into a downward spiral. The disjointed nature of the story didn't help much either.
Well. Hm.
I'm not sure what I think of this book. The obvious place to start is that it's a modern day version of "Midsummer Night's Dream." It's a frenetic dance that pulls the readers along almost as much as the characters. It took me almost four months of picking the book up and putting it down before I finally brought it on a plane and forced myself to read it. It's a book with many layers which will intrigue some readers but jus annoyed the recovering English major in me.
I'm not sure what I think of this book. The obvious place to start is that it's a modern day version of "Midsummer Night's Dream." It's a frenetic dance that pulls the readers along almost as much as the characters. It took me almost four months of picking the book up and putting it down before I finally brought it on a plane and forced myself to read it. It's a book with many layers which will intrigue some readers but jus annoyed the recovering English major in me.
I waffled between one and two stars until the last 10% of the book when it rose to a solid three stars (I liked it). That's about as sophisticated as my reviews ever are, but there you have it.
UPDATE! I've upgraded to four stars based on how much I've been thinking about this book a year later.
UPDATE! I've upgraded to four stars based on how much I've been thinking about this book a year later.
Another great novel by Chris Adrian. His first novel Gob's Grief really blew me away...and so far I have yet to be disappointed in his work.
This is a re-telling (?) of Midsummer Nights Dream...but focusing on Titania, Oberon, Puck and the fairies. Yes - there are some characters working on a play, and there are some lost connections between some characters that mirror the two couples in the original Shakespeare. However - he seems to take that play as a starting point, a cliff to leap off of - and the free fall is pretty amazing and brilliant.
This is a re-telling (?) of Midsummer Nights Dream...but focusing on Titania, Oberon, Puck and the fairies. Yes - there are some characters working on a play, and there are some lost connections between some characters that mirror the two couples in the original Shakespeare. However - he seems to take that play as a starting point, a cliff to leap off of - and the free fall is pretty amazing and brilliant.
I expected something better. I was not impressed.