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lilcoppertop's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Abortion, Gore, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Rape, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, and War
kktaylor11's review against another edition
I don't DNF books. I just don't. I push through and give them chance after chance and typically I can get invested....or I set them down and pick them up 6 months or a year later. This book holds the honor of being the first book I ever officially and intentionally DNF....
I picked it up because of the cover - so maybe that's a lesson in this? But it's so beautiful! And it's long -- 944 pages -- which is great because it will hold me over for awhile. And it's about Russian history, one of my passions. All the things were going for it....and then I started reading it. Disclaimer - I LOVE long books. The length did NOT scare me off here -- check out the books I've read for proof. I lean into epics. I made it more than 12 hours into this audiobook before finally throwing up my hands and saying "forget it."
From the very beginning the premise is weak (and becomes super annoying.) The book is supposedly a "letter about our family history" the narrator is writing to her niece after going to pick the niece up when she ran away. It's an awkward and forced frame story -- made even more so by the fact that it quickly transcends into an omniscient narrator. She knows the thoughts, feelings, urges, and details of every single character - including some that are only slightly connected. OK, so you let go of the frame and dig into the story itself...BUT NO! Because at TOTALLY random moments the narrator will break the narrative to say "or so I imagine, Brillka, since I wasn't there..." WHAT? Not 2 sentences before you were telling us what the character was thinking, or what kind of liqueur they were drinking. It's jarring and unnecessary and breaks the continuity of the story.
And then there's the story itself. The general basis without spoiling anything is that there have been 7 generations of a family that have an embedded curse because the patriarch somehow found a recipe for "magic" chocolate and anytime you MAKE this chocolate something horrible happens as "payment" for the delicious chocolate. Ummm...OK...except he made his fortune off the chocolate and nothing really horrible happened to him? (With one exception His wife was conned into getting pregnant again to have a son for him because he made her this chocolate-- seems really ethically questionable -- and she ends up having twin girls and one dies at birth as does the wife. Interestingly, however, he's used this same chocolate as the basis for his whole business with no problems previously or after -- it's just when you drink the hot chocolate that you are cursed apparently? ). Anyway, each generation lives their lives and comes in contact with the chocolate at some point and then "pays the price." Except the price is never magic. It's always their fault. It's always something STUPID they did that causes a consequence. (Side note -- one of the biggest problems I had with this book is that I just didn't LIKE a single character. Not one. There wasn't one character that I found myself caring about because they are all selfish, self centered and basically stupid. There's not enough redeeming value to overlook that or invest in them. ( Stasia is super selfish about her husband - basically pissed at him from the get-go because he is doing his job. Costya is a spoiled brat. Christine is annoyingly self centered and focused on her beauty and there's something really uncomfortable about her obsession with Costya. Kitty is irritatingly stubborn and self-centered - not caring how much danger Andro is bringing on the whole family ....just like Andro doesn't give a flip what risk he puts the family in. Stasia's weird obsession/love affair? WTH was it? with Andro's mother the poet is totally pointless -- she's totally obsessed and spending all her time with a revolutionary poet that Christine even warns her about, but then when the Poet is arrested everyone just kind of shrugs and no one cares that she just takes her son and basically adopts him? Then he grows up to become a traitor too and no one really notices until they are like "oh man, he's gone!" And Christine can just call up (well, write to) the most powerful man in Georgia and he'll let a traitor out of Siberian prison camp because she asked - but he doesn't want to see her again because her face is ugly. In 1950s Soviet Georgia? NO WAY. Not a chance. It's just too much bouncing around and no one has redeeming value -- and the overlaps are WAAAY too convenient.
Also, interspersed between the narrative itself are random sections highlighting Russian/Georgian history. There are not-so-subtle references to historical figures (IE: "The Generalissimus" = Stalin, "The Little Big Man" = Beria) and moments of almost historical lecture (although really only minimally accurate -- from a historical standpoint it's definitely a writer giving a brief summary of her understanding of history not a historian telling a story) which try to turn this into a multigenerational historical novel....and instead leading to more disconnection from the novel itself.
Finally, it really didn't need to be 900 pages long. What it needs is a good editor. Maybe the author thinks that she is writing the "next War and Peace" (I literally saw a review with that title -- whoever wrote that never ACTUALLY read War and Peace.) but the truth is that she is FAR FAR from the Russian Epics. There are so many side characters that fill 10- 20-50 pages and could be easily completely cut out of the story. ( IE: Etta? Costya's lover? I get that she needed to create that "deep longing" for an older woman for him, but you really could have cut out the parts after Etta and Costya break up. There's no need at all for the whole siege of Leningrad, blind pianist named Eta, coughing up blood, exchanging papers part. Leave it at her standing behind the door listening to him call for her. The rest of it is a cheap swing at "look how horrible Leningrad was" -- and that deserves a full book, not a few pages that are excessively emotion driven with no real understanding of the situation. ) I stopped about halfway in and there were so many sections I found myself thinking "this is absolutely pointless..."
So - bottom line:
1) Bad frame story interrupts narrative for no reason jerking you out of the progression of the story.
2) Crappy characters who have nothing to connect the reader to them, leaving little investment
3) Weak historical asides that add little to the story and don't adequately teach history - so what is their purpose?
4) Poor plot structure too reliant on convenient coincidences and unsupported causation.
5) 1000 pages of this -- at least 500 of which could be easily edited out and you'd STILL have a book that's too long for the story it's telling.
I give this 1 star because it's so bad I resent the fact I'll never get back the 12 hours I spent on it.
I picked it up because of the cover - so maybe that's a lesson in this? But it's so beautiful! And it's long -- 944 pages -- which is great because it will hold me over for awhile. And it's about Russian history, one of my passions. All the things were going for it....and then I started reading it. Disclaimer - I LOVE long books. The length did NOT scare me off here -- check out the books I've read for proof. I lean into epics. I made it more than 12 hours into this audiobook before finally throwing up my hands and saying "forget it."
From the very beginning the premise is weak (and becomes super annoying.) The book is supposedly a "letter about our family history" the narrator is writing to her niece after going to pick the niece up when she ran away. It's an awkward and forced frame story -- made even more so by the fact that it quickly transcends into an omniscient narrator. She knows the thoughts, feelings, urges, and details of every single character - including some that are only slightly connected. OK, so you let go of the frame and dig into the story itself...BUT NO! Because at TOTALLY random moments the narrator will break the narrative to say "or so I imagine, Brillka, since I wasn't there..." WHAT? Not 2 sentences before you were telling us what the character was thinking, or what kind of liqueur they were drinking. It's jarring and unnecessary and breaks the continuity of the story.
And then there's the story itself. The general basis without spoiling anything is that there have been 7 generations of a family that have an embedded curse because the patriarch somehow found a recipe for "magic" chocolate and anytime you MAKE this chocolate something horrible happens as "payment" for the delicious chocolate. Ummm...OK...except he made his fortune off the chocolate and nothing really horrible happened to him? (With one exception
Also, interspersed between the narrative itself are random sections highlighting Russian/Georgian history. There are not-so-subtle references to historical figures (IE: "The Generalissimus" = Stalin, "The Little Big Man" = Beria) and moments of almost historical lecture (although really only minimally accurate -- from a historical standpoint it's definitely a writer giving a brief summary of her understanding of history not a historian telling a story) which try to turn this into a multigenerational historical novel....and instead leading to more disconnection from the novel itself.
Finally, it really didn't need to be 900 pages long. What it needs is a good editor. Maybe the author thinks that she is writing the "next War and Peace" (I literally saw a review with that title -- whoever wrote that never ACTUALLY read War and Peace.) but the truth is that she is FAR FAR from the Russian Epics. There are so many side characters that fill 10- 20-50 pages and could be easily completely cut out of the story. (
So - bottom line:
1) Bad frame story interrupts narrative for no reason jerking you out of the progression of the story.
2) Crappy characters who have nothing to connect the reader to them, leaving little investment
3) Weak historical asides that add little to the story and don't adequately teach history - so what is their purpose?
4) Poor plot structure too reliant on convenient coincidences and unsupported causation.
5) 1000 pages of this -- at least 500 of which could be easily edited out and you'd STILL have a book that's too long for the story it's telling.
I give this 1 star because it's so bad I resent the fact I'll never get back the 12 hours I spent on it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Blood, Death, Violence, Body horror, Death of parent, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Abortion, and Child death
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