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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
I became more sucked into this story than I expected given that I found the characters all annoying and the level of intrigue frustrating.
Beautifully descriptive, but I found it quite hard to read because very little actually happened considering it’s length.
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
October 2017: I finally read through the whole book this time, and enjoyed it. It took me a looong time though; the prose is so dense and the pace of the story is molasses-slow. I would put this down to read other things and come back to it. I love the idea of the book-- the idea, the setting, the bizarre characters-- but I wasn't always in the mood for something so slow, nor was I captivated by every single plot thread/character. I always devoured Steerpike's scenes though!
October 2014 DNF ~55%: I really wanted to like this book but it just wasn't working for me. The prose is beautiful but dense and plodding and heavy. The story moves along at such a slow pace, and while there are times where I enjoy books like this, I really had difficulty staying attentive with this one.
October 2014 DNF ~55%: I really wanted to like this book but it just wasn't working for me. The prose is beautiful but dense and plodding and heavy. The story moves along at such a slow pace, and while there are times where I enjoy books like this, I really had difficulty staying attentive with this one.
Long unnecessary prose that wasn’t put there to be pretty just to be long. Nothing happened at all. I listened for an hour and one guy walked around the castle doing nothing. Not for me.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
This book, all 21:34 hours of it, was visualised -against my will- as a Tim Burton stop motion film in my head.
Storygraph needs a "weird" mood checkbox for books like this. This was definately an experience and I can see why it's become influential to certain set of writers.
Description of place, atmosphere, and character are prime here and the plot, such as it is, unspools purely through scenes of this cast of Dickensian weirdos going about their strange insular lives. It's a real change of pace to modern fantasy and there's a dark absuridst streak the British are particularly good at.
Storygraph needs a "weird" mood checkbox for books like this. This was definately an experience and I can see why it's become influential to certain set of writers.
Description of place, atmosphere, and character are prime here and the plot, such as it is, unspools purely through scenes of this cast of Dickensian weirdos going about their strange insular lives. It's a real change of pace to modern fantasy and there's a dark absuridst streak the British are particularly good at.
In bad need of an editor. Tried to power through it, but couldn’t dedicate another 8 hours to something I was bored by
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
might rise it to 4.5 stars after i read further about the creation of the book.
this was a big surprise. the enchanting factor for me and what absorbed me so quickly was the whole premise and structure of the book. it was unique, but also so subtly dark and twisted, the dialogues were very chaotic but still they would follow a logical order. i believe that the author measured everything and created a perfect metric that would create this perfect and bizarre enviroment. it's something that i rarely find in literature, authors that pretend they're letting it go wild but in reality they are holding everything under their control. as a reader it feels like a dream to go through such narrative, and i'm very glad i found a good example of that in this book. i absolutely loved the world setting, the ridiculously macabre personality of all characters trapped in an idea that separated them from the world. special mention to fuchsia; she was probably the most interesting character for me throughout the entire book and i enjoyed reading her pov very much.
i'm not sure if i will enjoy the following books as much but i want to give them a go. i'm also a big fan of mervyn drawing his own ideas and not only narrating them. that's the dream!
this was a big surprise. the enchanting factor for me and what absorbed me so quickly was the whole premise and structure of the book. it was unique, but also so subtly dark and twisted, the dialogues were very chaotic but still they would follow a logical order. i believe that the author measured everything and created a perfect metric that would create this perfect and bizarre enviroment. it's something that i rarely find in literature, authors that pretend they're letting it go wild but in reality they are holding everything under their control. as a reader it feels like a dream to go through such narrative, and i'm very glad i found a good example of that in this book. i absolutely loved the world setting, the ridiculously macabre personality of all characters trapped in an idea that separated them from the world. special mention to fuchsia; she was probably the most interesting character for me throughout the entire book and i enjoyed reading her pov very much.
i'm not sure if i will enjoy the following books as much but i want to give them a go. i'm also a big fan of mervyn drawing his own ideas and not only narrating them. that's the dream!