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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It took me a little bit to get into this, by the end I decided it is a masterpiece. The characters are messy, complicated, just so human. The way that the stories were woven together was very interesting.
Pretty good!! I cried during Omeir’s first chapter when his grandfather described him as a small shape in the snow and the huge twin bulls they raise and the grandfather saying they grow so fast you can hear it and Omeir knowing he’s probably joking but when no one’s around pressing his ear the bull’s ribs. The different storylines are so separate for so long that it feels like three different books. Even by the end, it’s basically three books. The length of the book is a detriment. Three epics in one, in three+ locations, across three eras is too much for one novel for me. The suspense when we would switch storylines slipped into frustration.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Unbelievably beautiful writing, intertwining three stories of past, present, and future with remarkable parallels across time.
This book felt like the almost 700 km train journey from the town where I live to the town where I'm from. For those unfamiliar with Romanian railroad services, it means excessively and unnecessarily long, uncomfortable, and giving you the impression it's going nowhere. Really, six hundred plus pages that could have been dramatically shortened. For the first four hundred plus, I was just looking for a bloody point (I knew the manuscript connected the timelines and the characters, I just couldn't get why). And, to be fair, at the very end, I still thought some things didn't add up.
I'm only giving this two stars because the twist in Konstance's story was actually interesting. I liked Omeir's story a bit, too, for the small tidbits of folklore here and there, but, again, I found that ending (and Anna's) too rushed and unrealistic. And don't get me started on the Zeno-Seymour timeline. Actually, don't get me started on Seymour at all. It seemed the author wanted a "redeemable villain" with a "cause you can understand" and all the things that are starting to become overdone in today's fiction (how funny, that when we try to avoid overdone cliches, we end up coming up with our own overdone cliches).
The biggest problem was the structure of the novel. Look, I get fragmentation. I get multiple timelines. In fact, two of my favorite books, "The overstory" and "The Lost book of Adana Moreau" have fragmentation and multiple timelines. But they use this device cleverly. Here, the fragmentation is all over the place, you pick up with a timeline after about two hundred pages when you already start to forget what the point was, and some chapters are too short, meaning it gives you no time to become invested in the characters.
This was a case of "great idea, not so great execution" and I'm a bit disappointed because I had such high hopes for it.
I'm only giving this two stars because the twist in Konstance's story was actually interesting. I liked Omeir's story a bit, too, for the small tidbits of folklore here and there, but, again, I found that ending (and Anna's) too rushed and unrealistic. And don't get me started on the Zeno-Seymour timeline. Actually, don't get me started on Seymour at all. It seemed the author wanted a "redeemable villain" with a "cause you can understand" and all the things that are starting to become overdone in today's fiction (how funny, that when we try to avoid overdone cliches, we end up coming up with our own overdone cliches).
The biggest problem was the structure of the novel. Look, I get fragmentation. I get multiple timelines. In fact, two of my favorite books, "The overstory" and "The Lost book of Adana Moreau" have fragmentation and multiple timelines. But they use this device cleverly. Here, the fragmentation is all over the place, you pick up with a timeline after about two hundred pages when you already start to forget what the point was, and some chapters are too short, meaning it gives you no time to become invested in the characters.
This was a case of "great idea, not so great execution" and I'm a bit disappointed because I had such high hopes for it.
I am all for a celebration of librarians and the role they play in sustaining humanity but I was completely unclear as to why I gasped to trudge through the (pretty significant) trauma of several children to get there and *start* at a bombing of a building containing other children. Oddly, I found the bald writing engaging but did not care at all about most of the characters or where the story was going. I am well aware of why we need librarians and why we need humanity guarded, thus, this is not the book for me.
I also took significant umbrage to the fact that the perpetrator of that bombing was clearly coded as autistic; I didn’t get far enough to see if it was explicitly stated but we don’t need to pile onto the stigmas that already exist. Looking forward to moving on to the next book.
I also took significant umbrage to the fact that the perpetrator of that bombing was clearly coded as autistic; I didn’t get far enough to see if it was explicitly stated but we don’t need to pile onto the stigmas that already exist. Looking forward to moving on to the next book.
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated