Reviews with content warning for Violence - You Dreamed of Empires

This read like a movie script and somehow contained too much and too little detail? The style was hard for me. Interesting to see a fictional picture of the time, I wish I could’ve been more “in it”

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gerbe077's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny slow-paced

3.0

I have mixed feelings about You Dreamed of Empires and could very well revisit it in the future and give it a higher or a lower rating. My own ignorance of the history of Mexico and its empires makes my experience of this book stilted and unsatisfactory. The constant explanation of customs and history disrupts the flow of the book, but I also would have been even more lost without them. I read another review that described the books as "slippery" and that is the best way to describe it. I found myself frequently rereading passages that did not make sense the first time through. I found the book read more like a movie script than a novel which made it difficult for me to enjoy. I think it could make a dynamic movie. Intermittent surrealism is popular in film right now so it would fit right it.

The scene that will stick with me is when the caudillo is shining his boots while praying and it rotates between the prayer and the brutal way the Spaniards acquired this oil. It made me feel nauseous and I usually have a strong stomach. I think the source of the nausea was the knowledge that horrors like that could very well have happened. This scene was necessary to the story, but there was another scene, a rape scene, that felt completely unnecessary to the progression of the story. That scene made me look up the author to confirm that, yes, this book was indeed written by a man.

I can't really give an overall summary of my thoughts of the book because it was so all over the place. Some moments I wanted to give the book up, some I laughed, some I gagged, and still some I thought that this will become a classic. The writing style is stream-of-consciousness and the timeline is warped. If you don't enjoy experimental writing, you won't enjoy this book.

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marielulus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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bookkaterer's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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swilkes's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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fuguballoon's review

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adventurous challenging dark

DNF the audiobook. Reading the reviews on here, I see a lot of us did not enjoy the narrator, and I strongly agree. There are also so many characters with long names that it was difficult keeping track of everyone while listening. Maybe would try again with a hard copy, but probably not.

Apparently, this book is funny, but I did not find it so. (Maybe I didn't read far enough? But IMHO if a book is billed as funny, there should be some humor in the first third of it.) Mostly, I found it violent and dark.

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stephyrm's review

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adventurous challenging dark funny informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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