Der Unsichtbare

H.G. Wells

3.39 AVERAGE

amw90's review against another edition

2.0

slow-paced

zabbelinha's review against another edition

4.0

"I'm the invisible man
I'm the invisible man
Incredible how you can
See right through me
(...)"

lewisdurrand's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

tkdgirl83's review against another edition

3.0

Least favourite H.G. Wells book so far. Not very exciting but thankfully it was very 'easy reading' (like a children's book) so I powered through and didn't get bored.

jpl5t's review against another edition

3.0

Not what I was expecting at all. A fun story. Sort of…

janthemann's review against another edition

mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Copying my review from Goodreads (with edits for language bc I was soooooo mad but I must remain demure and classy) and guess what blessed invention this site has that GR doesn't:

0 STARS!

I do not care if it's a metaphor. I do not care if it means anything at all actually. Reading this book made me feel like the lady from The Yellow Wallpaper. I had MUCH more fun getting teeth pulled.

Wells' use of repetition every other page is done past the point of stylistic repetition into outright insanity by sentence number six. There were times where I absolutely could not believe an editor let 6-7 sentences with the same exact opener be printed. Repetition is great. I use it, too. Wells' repetition doesn't add emphasis to anything meaningful and it's more like beating you over the head with the most awkward phrase he could've possibly chosen to repeat.

The phonetic accents are basically unreadable. And I thought the phonetic accents in The Green Mile were a little rough to read. This book is literally unintelligible at points because Wells drops entire halves of words, replaces letters, replaces entire words, all in the same dialogue to the point where I have no idea what is being said and it makes my eyes want to start bleeding. Once again, phonetic accents can be silly and fun. This usage is outrageously stupid and I couldn't make heads or tails of a lot of it even when sounding it out. And I'm from the south dawg. I know my way around an accent.

Some appalling examples of the dialogue, everyone talks like this except the MC. like are you kidding me did you REALLY think you ate THAT MUCH???

"If 'e ent there, his close are. And what's 'e doin' without his close, then? 'Tas a most curious basness." I'm about to close you over the head with a bass guitar.
"Says he wi' nart. Warn't speakin' to us, wuz he?" This is how jojo fanfic writers write Speedwagon's cockney accent.

There's one line that was absolutely unintelligible and made me put the entire thing down and reconnect with nature for a bit but I can't find it again. Maybe I hallucinated it. Who knows at this point.

The concept of an invisible man is great. Absolutely everything in the execution of it is actual dog rear. The story is so wandering, pointless, and has so few substantial characters (or maybe I just can't differentiate them BECAUSE I DONT KNOW HOW THEY ALL TALK...) that by page 20 and page 120 I was still struggling to find it in me to care about anything that was happening. Mostly I kept reading because I wanted to see if literally anything worth this nonsense DID happen. It didn't btw!!!! Also everyone has the exact same personality and a bunch of names that do not roll off the tongue so at a certain point I stopped processing who did what except for the Invisible Man.

Beyond the story being lackluster in every regard, to return to the writing itself, it's the most dense and least creative writing I have seen in probably years. Absolutely terrible vocabulary with larger words spread out here and there as if Wells forgot that writers are supposed to have good grips on English vocab and popped open a dictionary to save his hide. But because it's so sporadic it nearly reads as if someone else edited in random Big Boy Words to make Wells sound smart, because 99% of the prose is simple language. Which I have nothing against. But wow does that habit take you out of a piece of writing faster than anything. Especially simple language combined with run-on sentences and other "purple prose" stylistic choices which do not at all complement the type of vocabulary he used. It's like a high schooler read Mary Shelley and gave their shittiest attempt at writing something half Gothic.

Can you tell I hated being alive while reading this <3 Took me a week to read 200 pages meanwhile I finished 600 pages in 4 days like HOW BAD. do you have to write. for me to not even want to get it over with enough to speed read it in a day or two? That's bad. That's diabolical.

Also it was published serially which I suspected from the way it's written.