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whatkatyread87's review against another edition
I……could not get into this. The story was everywhere and there were soooooo many adjectives. So many.
lifeinbooks's review against another edition
the writing style is too confusing, couldn't get into the story
book_lizard42's review against another edition
4.0
This book was provocative and evocative, and it's a stretch to say I liked it. It wasn't a comfortable read, but a well-written and thought-provoking books deserves stars. Not every book should be comfortable.
aquint's review against another edition
2.0
I found myself speeding through this to be done with it. I disliked the characters and the story felt like it was going in too many directions and trying too hard to be clever.
kimobim's review against another edition
1.0
This book was just terrible. It sounds amazing from the blurb, but it was just so difficult to get through. It felt like there was just no plot. I understand what he was trying to get at, but I feel like he just never got there. Nothing was resolved, in fact there was absolutely no climax to this story. It could have been written so much better. Maybe it was over my head, but I believe myself to be an intelligent person and voracious reader but this was just a huge waste of time.
I kept reading hoping that it would get better or SOMETHING, ANYTHING would happen, but the development just wasn't there.
I kept reading hoping that it would get better or SOMETHING, ANYTHING would happen, but the development just wasn't there.
meshuggeknitter's review against another edition
After wanting to read this book for ages, my library finally had this available as an e-book. I eagerly started reading and bam - could just not get into it. The story line is intriguing but found the writing very hard to follow. I kept waiting for the prose to pull me into the story but finally gave up.
iddylu's review against another edition
2.0
It feels really hypocritical of me to think "I can't believe this book has such a low average rating on Goodreads" and then add yet another two-star review to the pile, but here we are. From reading some of the other reviews, it seems like it was apparently marketed as a thriller, which it definitely isn't - and so a good chunk of those low reviews are from people who thought they were getting one type of book and ended up with something very different. I'm not one of those, but still, it didn't hit the mark for me. It's very well-written, so that's not the issue. Honestly, it might just be that I'm not that into surrealism. Oh, well.
terrypaulpearce's review against another edition
4.0
What hit me from the first page with this book, and kept hitting me again and again, is the prose. After careful consideration, the word 'sumptuous' seems to fit best. I could wallow in Marcus' turn of phrase and description without even much in the way of a story, in the way he weaves deep insights about life into beautiful sentences about anything and everything. BUt in fact there's a diverting story here too: what if your child was killing you, slowly, every time they communicated with you? What if this were happening everywhere? Bizarre and surreal at times, and maybe ultimately unsatisfying to people who want everything explained, The Flame Alphabet is always atmospheric, always perfectly crafted, and always intriguing. The best literary sci-fi I've read in a long time.
aleffert's review against another edition
4.0
This has a nice science fiction premise: Children acquire a disease where speaking causes an actual illness in adults. It starts from there and gets weirder and freakin' weirder. The disease spreads. The very notion of communication is called into question. Society is deeply fucked.
The whole thing is suffused with an intense visceral anxiety that reflects the toxic language of the book. It's full of bodily fluids and uncomfortable feelings. Reading it wasn't painful or difficult per se, indeed, it was quite a bit more readable than The Age of String and Wire, which I mostly enjoyed despite its opacity, but reading this made me kind of ick.
There are all these juicy themes running around - communication between generations, solitude, the power of symbols and names, but they all kind of hover on the edge of saying anything specific. Which, is totally allowed, but felt just slightly on the wrong side of coherence.
The characters are kind of flat and awful.
I think I liked this. Parts of it were amazing. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. But if you can deal with a certain amount of Experimental, it has a lot of positive qualities.
The whole thing is suffused with an intense visceral anxiety that reflects the toxic language of the book. It's full of bodily fluids and uncomfortable feelings. Reading it wasn't painful or difficult per se, indeed, it was quite a bit more readable than The Age of String and Wire, which I mostly enjoyed despite its opacity, but reading this made me kind of ick.
There are all these juicy themes running around - communication between generations, solitude, the power of symbols and names, but they all kind of hover on the edge of saying anything specific. Which, is totally allowed, but felt just slightly on the wrong side of coherence.
The characters are kind of flat and awful.
I think I liked this. Parts of it were amazing. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. But if you can deal with a certain amount of Experimental, it has a lot of positive qualities.