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katyab's review against another edition
2.0
With all the enticing reviews, especially the ones comparing it to His Dark Materials and American Gods, I was so certain I was going to love The Absolute Book. I was so excited. Which is perhaps why I persisted in reading much longer than I should have. Hell, I finished the damn thing, but even that achievement wasn't enough to counteract the disappointment I felt in having got there. I wish I'd known sooner that this book wasn't going to get over its obscure plotting, passive characters, dull pacing, and hollow worldbuilding. I found myself looking back at those reviews that called it "bewitching" and "astounding", believing I was somehow getting it all wrong. And then I looked at reviews from other readers, and discovered that it wasn't just me that found the whole thing incomprehensible.
Knox writes beautifully, and can really dissect a moment into wonderful sentences. That's maybe what earned it two stars rather than something lower. But it's a terrible shame that most of those moments meandered and stood still when they should have been driving forward. Besides one or two well-paced and emotionally engaging episodes (which were not even part of the main plot, but backstory), I was not compelled, nor interested in the story I was being told. And I felt as if that was my fault, for not understanding this nuanced and intricate prose and the references, for not being well-read or academic or literary-minded enough, for not agreeing that this was something "superior" in the genre. But that prose tended to glide over events so much that I had no idea when I should be paying attention, and therefore I missed so much. And even if I went back to reread those parts, I suspected that I still wouldn't understand what had happened, and frankly I didn't care or have the energy to do so anyway. I needed something in the story to go forward, rather than force me to retrace my steps.
The characters were all hollow and just too fuzzy to get a good idea of their motivations and personalities, if the latter was there at all. (God, I'm being really b*tchy about this...) The only one I was interested in was Taryn's father, (a relatively minor character in the scheme of things) who my brain decided to picture as Rhys Darby, and therefore my knowledge of that actor's humour and personality did all the heavy lifting. Not sure how different the experience would have been had my brain not done that. The main characters were just... wispy and insubstantial. Felt as if I was reading through a window. Or they were a conduit for the author's ideas, and never had their own power and substance, or voice. Their feelings weren't obvious. If Knox wrote that one character started to cry, or got angry, or felt joy, I didn't have enough information to think "ah, yes, of course they'd feel [x] about this". I felt like this story was being dictated at me, and the characters' emotions were not part of a shared experience with the reader. I did not inhabit their minds and feel what they felt.
I did not feel immersed in this world, or any of the worlds Knox created. Everything felt blunt and hard to picture, and the featured tropes of fantasy (fae, fairyland, angels, demons, medieval-inspired settings), just felt so underdeveloped and stuck-on and did nothing new. For me, the world of Sidhe ended in a mist just beyond the horizon: I had no real understanding of scale or distance or climate, or the connection between places. Often chapters would end with characters in one place, and begin the next chapter with them in another place, and while portals feature significantly, teleportation often wasn't the reason this had happened. The author just skipped to the next event, and there was no effort or sense of journey. The chapters started to feel disjointed, as if the author had written characters into different scenarios, out of order, and made no effort to stitch them together cleanly.
What a rant. I have to stop otherwise I'll find something else to get annoyed about.
TLDR: Overwritten, anticlimactic, disappointing. Sad face. :(
Knox writes beautifully, and can really dissect a moment into wonderful sentences. That's maybe what earned it two stars rather than something lower. But it's a terrible shame that most of those moments meandered and stood still when they should have been driving forward. Besides one or two well-paced and emotionally engaging episodes (which were not even part of the main plot, but backstory), I was not compelled, nor interested in the story I was being told. And I felt as if that was my fault, for not understanding this nuanced and intricate prose and the references, for not being well-read or academic or literary-minded enough, for not agreeing that this was something "superior" in the genre. But that prose tended to glide over events so much that I had no idea when I should be paying attention, and therefore I missed so much. And even if I went back to reread those parts, I suspected that I still wouldn't understand what had happened, and frankly I didn't care or have the energy to do so anyway. I needed something in the story to go forward, rather than force me to retrace my steps.
The characters were all hollow and just too fuzzy to get a good idea of their motivations and personalities, if the latter was there at all. (God, I'm being really b*tchy about this...) The only one I was interested in was Taryn's father, (a relatively minor character in the scheme of things) who my brain decided to picture as Rhys Darby, and therefore my knowledge of that actor's humour and personality did all the heavy lifting. Not sure how different the experience would have been had my brain not done that. The main characters were just... wispy and insubstantial. Felt as if I was reading through a window. Or they were a conduit for the author's ideas, and never had their own power and substance, or voice. Their feelings weren't obvious. If Knox wrote that one character started to cry, or got angry, or felt joy, I didn't have enough information to think "ah, yes, of course they'd feel [x] about this". I felt like this story was being dictated at me, and the characters' emotions were not part of a shared experience with the reader. I did not inhabit their minds and feel what they felt.
I did not feel immersed in this world, or any of the worlds Knox created. Everything felt blunt and hard to picture, and the featured tropes of fantasy (fae, fairyland, angels, demons, medieval-inspired settings), just felt so underdeveloped and stuck-on and did nothing new. For me, the world of Sidhe ended in a mist just beyond the horizon: I had no real understanding of scale or distance or climate, or the connection between places. Often chapters would end with characters in one place, and begin the next chapter with them in another place, and while portals feature significantly, teleportation often wasn't the reason this had happened. The author just skipped to the next event, and there was no effort or sense of journey. The chapters started to feel disjointed, as if the author had written characters into different scenarios, out of order, and made no effort to stitch them together cleanly.
What a rant. I have to stop otherwise I'll find something else to get annoyed about.
TLDR: Overwritten, anticlimactic, disappointing. Sad face. :(
katykat_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
maddy_walock's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.75
robyndeak's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.5
laurawil's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
cladis's review against another edition
2.0
I gave it 2 stars because I’ve been trying to read this book since my boyfriend gave it to me and it’s simply BORING. I'm feeling disappointed, stressed and confused. Wtf is happening here? And to justify my boringness I'll use the fact that every time I opened this book I read a few pages and give up after some minutes. So I did what I do when I'm getting tedious about a book: I read the last two chapters and that was all. No end good enough. So that's it, for those who loved this huge mass of paper: you rock, I'd love to have your patience.
frunge's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
alex_watkins's review against another edition
4.0
This was certainly a genre-bending ride, starting out almost like a thriller, swerving to portal fantasy, then mythology, and back again. I was reading on a kindle so I didn't even realize it was 650 pages. Of course I like all books with a library focus, though this was got right up to the edge of all books are very special and no book should ever be thrown away - which like no, sorry Elizabeth, but you are not a librarian.
megguy's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Fun read and interesting fantasy but not the best plot or characters. Still enjoyed though.