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caroline_norrish's review
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, and Child abuse
rebeccameyrink's review against another edition
challenging
dark
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
2.0
This book was too ambitious. This is about a town of people in Uzbekistan that has a railway and it’s centre. The story jumps from character to character who’s loves all intersect.
The book does give you a list of characters but the list is 130 characters long which is overwhelming for a book with 330 pages. I felt like the book was trying to tell the story of everyone in the town and on top of that there were many footnotes of real life history.
I love stories that feature a large cast of intersecting stories but this book got lost in the details and didn’t have an overarching plot to pull it all together. Part way through the book I gave up flipping to the character list section and decided to give up on trying to figure out how the characters lives intersected with others.
There were some nice moments in the first third of the book and even though I couldn’t figure out how any character connected with any other character I was still enjoying the story but as the narrative moves on it becomes increasingly violent and I couldn’t find the reason these scenes were included.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia and Rape
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