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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
'But the means is all we ever get. We never quite reach the end.' En daarom kijken we met argusogen naar de middelen.
Complex, meeslepend, duizelingwekkend en een beetje lang. Graag gelezen.
Complex, meeslepend, duizelingwekkend en een beetje lang. Graag gelezen.
challenging
slow-paced
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I enjoyed how much this book made me think. It's a dense read - a big book, requiring a lot of attention to read. But it's worth it. It's a little bit like that difficult-but-amazing person you know, the one who sometimes pulls outrageous stunts, but is so wonderful and lovable that they're totally worth it. It gets your gears grinding, and has you pondering the world we live in, the future, and the entire concept of surveillance. It has a lot of layers, and complexity, and there are times where you just have to let it lead you where it's going, without wondering too much exactly where it will go....just be patient, enjoy the ride, and you'll enjoy the book.
This extreme mind-bender is going to appeal hugely to those that love David Mitchell's puzzle box structure in Cloud Atlas, the paranoid/philosophical reality shifts of Philip K. Dick, the encyclopedic adventurousness of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon & Baroque Cycle, William Gibson's razor-edged futuristic social dread, and perhaps even more so the epic literary tapestries of Thomas Pynchon, Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Delillo's Underworld. Harkaway paints a cautionary future, an uncertain present, and a bloody past, all together in one hallucinatory mindscape of incredible storytelling bravura!
I have no idea what I thought about this book. At times, I thought it was unpleasant and not at all fun. At other times I was drawn in. I have to say it would be much better to read it in print. I couldn't tell what was going on at the beginning of chapters because the narrator didn't really make a clear difference when speaking as a woman. So that made it hard to follow. But it was also stories within stories and I have to say it probably needs more attention than I gave it. Would I recommend it? I don't know, actually. I just don't know.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It wasn't very far into the book that I realised, that doing this on audio only was not ideal, but it was already too late to quit. It had sucked me in. So while I have a number of tiny little complaints, I can't accurately decide if they're about the book itself, or just the audiobook. That's not to say that there's anything actually wrong with the audiobook either, just that it's a bit too complex a story to feel comfortable in audio. The first time around at least. So I'll have to get a physical copy, and do an immersive read of it to get a better hold of it before writing a proper review.
I knew this book was going to be a challenging read, but it started promisingly so I decided to give it a go. It remained promising until about three-quarters of the way through, at which point it began to devolve into a morass of post-modern nonsense. I didn’t feel like the work I was putting into trying to understand what was going on was paying off at all, and didn’t get the sense that it was ever going to (or if it did, that I’d be able to understand it), so I gave up. It pains me to not finish books, but this one had become such a slog that I just couldn’t anymore.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
There was a point 70% of the way in that I thought that there is no way this is leading to a satisfying conclusion. Thankfully I was wrong.
Deep, twisting, muddy. Much more than I expected.
Deep, twisting, muddy. Much more than I expected.