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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
Liked it, didn't love it. I spent half the time mentally yelling at the main character to: do something! don't be such a pushover! fight!
dark
A different kind of story, a unique emphasis on sound throughout. Interesting and fairly entertaining.
Wow, very evocative writing. It was beautiful and the story was lovely and so were the characters. I kept thinking of Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven, though it wasn't much about his life as a famous castrati.
Excellent book! The first half is kind of a slog but the second half is so fantastic. Highly recommend this book.
A
A
If you told me I would enjoy a book about 18th century opera, I would not have believed you. But I did. It can only be more fascinating to those who love opera. At times, the main character seems to be perpetually cursed, at others blessed with such good fortune that seems implausible even for fiction. Yet the story is captivating, I encourage those to continue who find it initially depressing or hard to continue. I enjoyed it very much.
I enjoyed the story, and the focus on the sense of hearing as opposed to sight throughout the book was refreshing. I would recommend to others.
The beginning seemed ok, but the more that I read the less I liked this book. To me it was a not-very-well-written historical romance. It was very dark, with rape (by a priest), child-molestation and castration, pompous monks, set to a backdrop of opera.
Nickolai is the son, named after the "father's" protector, of Moses. Moses is orphaned in horrific circumstances and suffers more when he goes with Nickolai to live at St. Gall. Moses, despite living in a bell tower with his mother, has super power of hearing. It serves him well and not so well throughout his troubled life. Though this story takes place in the 1700's, there are some parallels with today and some of the terrible stories we hear about. However, there was not enough here (and way too much terror) to let me like this book.
Nickolai is the son, named after the "father's" protector, of Moses. Moses is orphaned in horrific circumstances and suffers more when he goes with Nickolai to live at St. Gall. Moses, despite living in a bell tower with his mother, has super power of hearing. It serves him well and not so well throughout his troubled life. Though this story takes place in the 1700's, there are some parallels with today and some of the terrible stories we hear about. However, there was not enough here (and way too much terror) to let me like this book.
I've had this one for a while and never heard the call to read it until I needed to read a book of historical fiction set before 1900 for my Book Riot Harder Challenge and (gasp!) I had managed to make it through 9 months of this year without having done that yet. Or if I did it was for another category of the challenge. How fortunate I hadn't. This is truly a lovely book, unusual in its topic IMHO, and lyric in its prose with sound becoming something that is so very corporeal, experienced in every cell of of the body. It is a retelling of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, with a cast of characters that is classic, and themes that resonate through to modern day. Not to be missed.