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piperclover's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
This is a really really difficult book for me to rate. I'm not even entirely sure how I feel about it. There's so many moving parts and names and places and things to remember that I'm honestly not sure I even I understand the story and anything but decently vague terms.
There's definitely a lot of things I did not like. Because it was written in 2009 it has many instances of casual fat jokes and sexism. Those were obnoxious. While this is a mystery it is very much a literary mystery so it's very slow and dense. Theres a ton of on page discussion of political uprisings, war, and machinations. In fact the entire first chapter pretty much is all discussing and info dumping about the fictional war between Russia and England on the Crimean peninsula.
The summary and title are incredibly misleading. I went into this thinking it was going to be a largely a story about how Jane Eyre comes to life from her book and how she gets put back inside of it but Jane Eyre doesn't make it on page until 78% of the way through this book. I enjoy the overarching plot a lot and there are a lot of really cool features about who can travel into the books and who can travel out of the books and how in books impacts the story, etc and I even really enjoy the main villain but I just wish that the summary and title were different so that it was more honest about what the book is actually about.
I don't usually enjoy historical fiction but here it's not bad. I also usually don't enjoy any sort of alternate timeline/flashbacks/ inserts that aren't contemporaneous to the plot but here the entries in the beginning of the chapter are quite neat. They add context and thoughts from various perspectives within the world of the story but after the plot ends so it becomes something of an annotated novel of a story being told.
The narrator is really great. If you like the Loki TV show on Disney plus I think you will enjoy this because it deals very heavily with the actual abilities of time travel as in it discusses it in detail in many scenes. Its also incredibly detailed about various literary theories such as if William Shakespeare actually wrote all the works attributed to him. I haven't read any of the big classics so this was definitely too detailed and niche for me.
There's definitely a lot of things I did not like. Because it was written in 2009 it has many instances of casual fat jokes and sexism. Those were obnoxious. While this is a mystery it is very much a literary mystery so it's very slow and dense. Theres a ton of on page discussion of political uprisings, war, and machinations. In fact the entire first chapter pretty much is all discussing and info dumping about the fictional war between Russia and England on the Crimean peninsula.
The summary and title are incredibly misleading. I went into this thinking it was going to be a largely a story about how Jane Eyre comes to life from her book and how she gets put back inside of it but Jane Eyre doesn't make it on page until 78% of the way through this book. I enjoy the overarching plot a lot and there are a lot of really cool features about who can travel into the books and who can travel out of the books and how in books impacts the story, etc and I even really enjoy the main villain but I just wish that the summary and title were different so that it was more honest about what the book is actually about.
I don't usually enjoy historical fiction but here it's not bad. I also usually don't enjoy any sort of alternate timeline/flashbacks/ inserts that aren't contemporaneous to the plot but here the entries in the beginning of the chapter are quite neat. They add context and thoughts from various perspectives within the world of the story but after the plot ends so it becomes something of an annotated novel of a story being told.
The narrator is really great. If you like the Loki TV show on Disney plus I think you will enjoy this because it deals very heavily with the actual abilities of time travel as in it discusses it in detail in many scenes. Its also incredibly detailed about various literary theories such as if William Shakespeare actually wrote all the works attributed to him. I haven't read any of the big classics so this was definitely too detailed and niche for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content
kappafrog's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Murder, Body shaming, Death, Gun violence, Fatphobia, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Car accident, Grief, Gore, Kidnapping, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Mental illness
Minor: Medical content, Toxic relationship, Stalking, Alcohol, Blood, Pregnancy, and Ableism
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