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3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
Despite the prose being nice, this simply isn't holding my attention. There are a plethora of unnamed characters, none of whom I feel any sort affinity to. Perhaps I'll come back to it one day, but for now, it's going to remain unfinished.
I haven't read anything quite like this before and I was surprised by how much it drew me in. Felt like a dream-y fable/folktale with gods, the afterworld. Focus begins on the quest of a man to bring back his beloved from the Isle of the Dead, but quickly becomes more about the afterworld and its infighting, with the overarching fight of Fate and a monster who's devouring the world. But through character study, somehow? It's weird, and very sexual, and entirely interesting.
I wanted to like this book. It's elegantly written and has some very interesting ideas about the nature of self and life and death, and makes use of historically-relevant metaphorical figures. But it is dull, and it is repetitive, and all of the elegance and metaphor in the world can't help it move along a little faster and in a way that makes any of the characters seem anything but cardboard.