3.48k reviews for:

The Vaster Wilds

Lauren Groff

3.85 AVERAGE

adventurous dark sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I am so relieved to be finished with this book! Would have been a DNF for me if not for my deep book-club-related guilt. I read it over just a few days so it could be over with, bandaid-style, thinking of this review as my Great Reward. 

This book is immersive, mincing, parabolic. This book is not subtle, complex, enjoyable. 

Reads like 250 pages of the King James Bible (we get it, we get it), with the ending
in plain sight on page two when she steals the smallpox boots


How much disbelief were we supposed to suspend? The girl is just naturally good at everything? Why was there so much
pooping and vomiting
?

There was some truly beautiful writing in the last two pages of chapter 19. Wish more of it was like that. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

Beautiful and bleak.

Utterly bizarre…a story that’s long and winding, yet ends up nowhere. Grateful at least for a long day in a waiting room to help get through it quickly.
inspiring reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This was bleak and unforgiving most of the time but I was surprised with how much I enjoyed this, especially because I don't recall really enjoying Matrix.
challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Couldn’t stop thinking about this book the whole time I was reading it. 

The poetic verse made it very hard to read and follow the story. 
adventurous dark tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No

„Girl become sunflower. Girl become dove. Girl become raven. Girls, all the many girls fleeing from pursuers, girls who were turned, even in their flight, into trees.“

„Are you sorry to leave this place that has allowed you these years of life? 
No, she said, for the blight of the english will come to this remoteness as well. It will spread into this land and infect this land and devour the people who were here first; it will slaughter them, diminish them. The hunger inside the god of my people can only be sated by domination. They will dominate until there is nothing left, then they will eat themselves. I am not of them. I will not be.“
adventurous challenging slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated