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3.89 AVERAGE


Yes, I read this because of Hozier’s upcoming album. 
No, I didn’t especially enjoy it. 
Yes, I recognise why it’s as famous as it is. 
No, I don’t think it’s bad.
Yes, it’s a classic.
No, I don’t care for it.

Love that people love this and again, I do recognise why it’s considered a masterpiece. Perhaps it’s my chronic lack of faith and religiosity but I just felt nothing reading this. I’m much more an imagery poetry gal and less about the epics. Anyways, glad I read it and love that I have a sick looking copy of it so I can be truly pretentious.
challenging emotional hopeful reflective
adventurous challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I FINISHED IT!!!! I deserve and award now!

I'm sure if I was a little more determined to fully understand what I was reading I would have appreciated the book a lot more. But since I am neither a historian or a theologian or lit major, I simply lacked the will or the background to enjoy this book. Plus I'm really lazy when it comes to reading footnotes.

Sayers' synopsis are fantastic and definitely worth reading at the start of every chapter.
Her translation provides for a relatively modern english though there is something lacking, in my personal opinion, as to the line breaks, it feels very heavy, like a soldier's marching beat and forced in its rhyme scheme, but I honestly have no clue as to what it sounded like originally in Italian, that's a youtube listen at a later date.

The story is a wondrous one and it is exceptionally hard not to imagine the surreal response this deep dive into the pits of hell must have brought out in its readers upon publication. This is definitely Fan Fiction brought to its emotionally charged extremes.

Side Note, At the end of the first book, Sayers explains the difference in how Dante would have viewed the world in comparison to today and I feel it could easily apply to magic and even our emotional responses as a human pre-scientific rational breakdown. It's worth a read and I've included a fragment below:
'The Ptolemaic universe is the universe we recognize, as we recognize a photograph or picture of the house in which we live. It is inferior to the Copernican in that its mathematics, even when corrected by modern knowledge, would be too complicated for ready calculation; but it is superior as a description of what the Heavens have to show us, because it is a direct transcript of the observed phenomena" (295)

Deel 1 (hel) was goed.
Delen 2 (louteringsberg) en 3 (hemel) waren vrij droog en saai.
dark slow-paced
challenging reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated