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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
http://angelerin.blogspot.com/2017/01/psycho-analysis-by-vr-stone-and-shadow.html
Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free ebook copy of The Shadow Land By: Elizabeth Kostova in exchange for an honest review.
I was very excited to read The Shadow Land since I loved The Historian by this author so much. The Historian is one of my favorite novels, but this one did not do it for me. The writing in this one killed me from about page two. I feel like unimportant things are described in too much detail. The writing droned on and on. I felt like I had been reading forever and I wasn't very far in. To be honest, I only made it to 5% and I had to quit. Wow.
#INeverDNFThisEarly
Overall The Shadow Land is a pretty disappointing read for me and I'm sad I had to DNF so early on. This book to me did not feel like the same writing that I loved in The Historian. Not everyone can be Tolkien and not every book needs that level of description. I couldn't get into this one at all so I figure why keep going if I already really dislike it?
#SecondDNFOf2017
I can't personally recommend this one, but if the blurb sounds good and you can handle long winded descriptions then maybe you'll like this one more than I did.
#HighlyRecommendTheHistorianThough
Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free ebook copy of The Shadow Land By: Elizabeth Kostova in exchange for an honest review.
I was very excited to read The Shadow Land since I loved The Historian by this author so much. The Historian is one of my favorite novels, but this one did not do it for me. The writing in this one killed me from about page two. I feel like unimportant things are described in too much detail. The writing droned on and on. I felt like I had been reading forever and I wasn't very far in. To be honest, I only made it to 5% and I had to quit. Wow.
#INeverDNFThisEarly
Overall The Shadow Land is a pretty disappointing read for me and I'm sad I had to DNF so early on. This book to me did not feel like the same writing that I loved in The Historian. Not everyone can be Tolkien and not every book needs that level of description. I couldn't get into this one at all so I figure why keep going if I already really dislike it?
#SecondDNFOf2017
I can't personally recommend this one, but if the blurb sounds good and you can handle long winded descriptions then maybe you'll like this one more than I did.
#HighlyRecommendTheHistorianThough
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for providing me with an advance copy of this book.
I want to give this book more than 3.5 stars, but less than a full 4 stars, but as Goodreads is Goodreads, 4 stars it is.
I found The Shadow Land to be a very good novel in many ways, yet I did have a few gripes with it, which I'd like to get out of the way so I can get to complimenting it.
The first gripe being with the way in which Elizabeth Kostova, the author, writes. She is a talented writer, for sure, but I struggled with her usage of overly-complicated words that felt gratuitous, as if she was trying hard to prove to me of her intelligence, of which I was already aware. I wouldn't even call it 'flowery' language, as it didn't aid with beautiful descriptions. Just these big words plonked in the middle of otherwise basic sentences, and it felt very forced. I kept having to press down on a word in the reader app to have the word defined, which quickly became tedious.
Secondly, her descriptions, which are a tag-along to her use of complicated words. Kostova described everything from people to places in great detail, which, for a reader, is usually wonderful, yet I could rarely paint a mental picture of what she was describing. I had a hard time seeing what she was showing me, and I felt it lessened the quality of the story on a whole. She frequently used the words "weirdly" and "strangely" as adjectives, but that gives me more of a general vibe, rather than providing me with visual descriptions that I can go to in my mind.
For example, she described a painting toward the middle of the book as "benignly painted in oils," and I have no idea what that means. Maybe because I have zero background in art, and that's on me, but I don't believe I should have to as a reader just so I can have a mental picture of a painting on a wall. Another example was in describing one of the main protagonists, as she writes, "His face was already not quite young." I'm not sure what that means. Is he young? Not quite? Already not quite? It exasperated me a little bit, as might be evident.
Gripes out of the way, I did indeed enjoy this novel. I learned much about Bulgaria and its culture, which I took great pleasure in. Understanding foreign traditions and ways of life different to what I know is something I treasure, and I definitely got that from The Shadow Land. Yet another country destroyed by wars and by political factionalism, where nobody was safe—even the most innocent of countrymen and women.
I wasn't expecting a slow-burning quasi murder mystery, with complex, endearing characters. The author takes us to mountainous villages and post-Communist Bulgarian cities, each as important as the protagonist, Alexandra, the young American who travels to Bulgaria to teach English, and the accompanying cast. Present and past are intertwined masterfully, and I appreciate that I was engrossed by both sides of history, not one more than the other. Of course, they come together in the end, and I found it to be really well done.
I want to give this book more than 3.5 stars, but less than a full 4 stars, but as Goodreads is Goodreads, 4 stars it is.
I found The Shadow Land to be a very good novel in many ways, yet I did have a few gripes with it, which I'd like to get out of the way so I can get to complimenting it.
The first gripe being with the way in which Elizabeth Kostova, the author, writes. She is a talented writer, for sure, but I struggled with her usage of overly-complicated words that felt gratuitous, as if she was trying hard to prove to me of her intelligence, of which I was already aware. I wouldn't even call it 'flowery' language, as it didn't aid with beautiful descriptions. Just these big words plonked in the middle of otherwise basic sentences, and it felt very forced. I kept having to press down on a word in the reader app to have the word defined, which quickly became tedious.
Secondly, her descriptions, which are a tag-along to her use of complicated words. Kostova described everything from people to places in great detail, which, for a reader, is usually wonderful, yet I could rarely paint a mental picture of what she was describing. I had a hard time seeing what she was showing me, and I felt it lessened the quality of the story on a whole. She frequently used the words "weirdly" and "strangely" as adjectives, but that gives me more of a general vibe, rather than providing me with visual descriptions that I can go to in my mind.
For example, she described a painting toward the middle of the book as "benignly painted in oils," and I have no idea what that means. Maybe because I have zero background in art, and that's on me, but I don't believe I should have to as a reader just so I can have a mental picture of a painting on a wall. Another example was in describing one of the main protagonists, as she writes, "His face was already not quite young." I'm not sure what that means. Is he young? Not quite? Already not quite? It exasperated me a little bit, as might be evident.
Gripes out of the way, I did indeed enjoy this novel. I learned much about Bulgaria and its culture, which I took great pleasure in. Understanding foreign traditions and ways of life different to what I know is something I treasure, and I definitely got that from The Shadow Land. Yet another country destroyed by wars and by political factionalism, where nobody was safe—even the most innocent of countrymen and women.
I wasn't expecting a slow-burning quasi murder mystery, with complex, endearing characters. The author takes us to mountainous villages and post-Communist Bulgarian cities, each as important as the protagonist, Alexandra, the young American who travels to Bulgaria to teach English, and the accompanying cast. Present and past are intertwined masterfully, and I appreciate that I was engrossed by both sides of history, not one more than the other. Of course, they come together in the end, and I found it to be really well done.
I liked the plot, but the story moved a little slow for me. There were also a lot of characters to keep track of.
Wasn’t feeling this book. I gave up after 100 pages when the plot was no further along than page 2, and I realized I really didn’t care about Alexandra or her quest.
Very disappointed as The Historian is one of my favorites ( hated the Swan Theives though).
Very disappointed as The Historian is one of my favorites ( hated the Swan Theives though).
I really enjoyed The Historian, and Kostova's newest work, "The Shadow Land" - while very different - does not disappoint. I don't want to give away the story, since the journey of discovering it is the joy of this book for me, but the focus is a young woman's discovery of herself, of history, and of a country that's very foreign to her, but perhaps not so alien after all.
Kostova is truly a master at immersing you in Bulgaria and its sordid past. I wanted to meet Bobby and I'm a sucker for a dog.
"The Shadow Land"begins with Alexandra Boyd, a young 20-something that decides to drop everything in her life in the US and go to Bulgaria to teach English. In the taxi to her hotel, she accidentally gets stuck with the bag of an elderly couple that simply says the name Stoyan Lazarov, containing an urn with ashes. And thus starts an odyssey of sorts, with Alex desperately seeking the couple to return their loved one, accompanied by a mysteriously helpful and fun taxi driver/ex-cop/poet and social activist (yeah, that's a resume and a half) named Bobby. They travel across all of Bulgaria, following clues from a motley assortment of characters while being alternatively cajoled and harassed by persons unknown who, under no circumstances, want the past to be unburied.
Interspersed with this wild ride are memories of Alex's past with her eccentric parents and wild brother in the Carolinian mountains. These memories gradually reveal a deeper picture of Alex's motives for finding the family of Lazarov, as well as what drives her.
I am probably in the minority here, but Kostova's debut effort "The Historian" was not my favorite. I found it bogged down in details, and while it had a beautifully haunting landscape, I couldn't get through it. However, strangely enough, "The Shadow Land" blew me away. Alex and Bobby have an engaging and believable friendship, the landscape is amazingly rendered, and the unstable political landscape was extremely interesting to learn about. Reading this book in 2017-2018 seemed especially, particularly timely, and I think Kostova must have drawn quite a bit on current events and climate.
My issues with this book are not minor, but are certainly overshadowed by the "pros." Alex's forays down memory lane with her brother Jack, while helpful in understanding her character, were clunky, not satisfying, and frankly unnecessary in their frequency. It took the reader out of the moment in Bulgaria, and the ending was unsatisfactory- essentially nonexistent. Alex could have told this story to Bobby in a series of conversations and that would have been just as successful, if not more.
However again, I sincerely hope that no one avoids this book for that reason. The Bulgarian scenery, quirky friendship, and haunting portrayal of political atrocities make it worth the read.
Interspersed with this wild ride are memories of Alex's past with her eccentric parents and wild brother in the Carolinian mountains. These memories gradually reveal a deeper picture of Alex's motives for finding the family of Lazarov, as well as what drives her.
I am probably in the minority here, but Kostova's debut effort "The Historian" was not my favorite. I found it bogged down in details, and while it had a beautifully haunting landscape, I couldn't get through it. However, strangely enough, "The Shadow Land" blew me away. Alex and Bobby have an engaging and believable friendship, the landscape is amazingly rendered, and the unstable political landscape was extremely interesting to learn about. Reading this book in 2017-2018 seemed especially, particularly timely, and I think Kostova must have drawn quite a bit on current events and climate.
My issues with this book are not minor, but are certainly overshadowed by the "pros." Alex's forays down memory lane with her brother Jack, while helpful in understanding her character, were clunky, not satisfying, and frankly unnecessary in their frequency. It took the reader out of the moment in Bulgaria, and the ending was unsatisfactory- essentially nonexistent. Alex could have told this story to Bobby in a series of conversations and that would have been just as successful, if not more.
However again, I sincerely hope that no one avoids this book for that reason. The Bulgarian scenery, quirky friendship, and haunting portrayal of political atrocities make it worth the read.
This was kind of long to listened to, but the narrators did a fabulous job. Learned some things about Bulgaria I didn't know as she was weaving the story together.
Trigger warnings: death of a parent, death of a sibling, torture, violence, death of an animal, descriptions of life in forced labour camps.
I was sold on this book pretty much as soon as I read the blurb. I read and loved The Historian when it first came out, and this is similar in a lot of ways, albeit minus the vampires.
It's the story of a young woman who goes to Bulgaria to teach English and accidentally ends up with a box of human ashes. As she searches all over Bulgaria for the family of the deceased, she finds herself being followed by some shady people and embroiled in a story about forced labour camps during the Communist era.
It's a compelling story full of fabulous characters and while I do feel like it could have been slightly shorter than it was, I ended up really really enjoying this.
I was sold on this book pretty much as soon as I read the blurb. I read and loved The Historian when it first came out, and this is similar in a lot of ways, albeit minus the vampires.
It's the story of a young woman who goes to Bulgaria to teach English and accidentally ends up with a box of human ashes. As she searches all over Bulgaria for the family of the deceased, she finds herself being followed by some shady people and embroiled in a story about forced labour camps during the Communist era.
It's a compelling story full of fabulous characters and while I do feel like it could have been slightly shorter than it was, I ended up really really enjoying this.