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3.24 AVERAGE
3.24 AVERAGE
A bit dark for a book I mostly listened to gardening in the summer...
Could not get into this book for the life of me. Tried to several times but it just felt all over the place with the back and forth jumps
Despite being hard to get into at first, this book was worth reading! It was a good mystery with a lot of literary ties in it.
Pearl does an excellent job of interweaving true history, whether Dante or Longfellow era, with murder mystery fiction. It reminded me of a better Da Vinci Code, both because I enjoy Dante's works more than Da Vinci's and because the book had a more specific focus in the Divine Comedy. Prior to this, I had no knowledge of Longfellow's translation, and thus, often misappropriated modern American Christian views of Hell on Dante, despite the contrary presented in this novel. I am excited to read other works by Pearl and re-read the Divine Comedy, but the book has other sub-themes that I find interesting and wish to explore including: PTSD in civil war veterans, Calvinism, and the works of Longfellow himself. Recommended for anyone who enjoys history and murder mysteries in the vein of Dan Brown (although I find Pearl's less accessible, fantastic, and more intellectual). It is also a good update/review for anyone who has read Dante's Inferno.
I adored this book. I gobbled it up. Dante, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and murder? Oh, such good stuff.
I would agree with other reviewers that it was hard to empathize with these characters. They reminded me a bit of the ones in Catch 22 who were too absurd to seem real. Also didn’t like that there were basically no female characters. Interesting plot but could not get lost in this book. And ew, I will not be able to get that image of maggots out of my head for a while. But overall, OK.
This author is nowhere near as smart as he believes he is.
This is what the "Da Vinci Code" should have been like! So good, so detailed, I'd almost call it historical fiction, but I won't. =) It sucked me in and then spit me out later with all sorts of thoughts about Dante (which, admittedly, I haven't read in literally years). The only thing is that the ending was anticlimatical. I found the ending an almost bizarre reversal, it was that poorly done. =(
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No