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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
This book felt extremely stuffy and slow. I kept pushing on despite not feeling very pulled to finish it and it became more and more of a dated and hard-to-follow slog.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
1.5
I read the bulk of this on a plane trip because I had nothing else to do, but it was a chore finishing the last third. This isn’t exactly poorly written, it just doesn’t appeal to me on a subjective level at all.
This feels like one of those coming-of-age fantasy books that have accumulated in the post-Harry Potter years, except it predates Harry Potter and it’s not kid-friendly. The closest point of comparison might be “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, at least in terms of the adolescent friendship angle. The problem is I’m just not into magician/wizard magic stuff and that’s the bulk of the book. The other part is boarding school antics, which I also can’t get invested in. I bought this on a whim at a book sale years ago so I didn’t realize that this was full of plot devices I don’t care about until I was too far into the book to stop. It’s just not for me.
I read the bulk of this on a plane trip because I had nothing else to do, but it was a chore finishing the last third. This isn’t exactly poorly written, it just doesn’t appeal to me on a subjective level at all.
This feels like one of those coming-of-age fantasy books that have accumulated in the post-Harry Potter years, except it predates Harry Potter and it’s not kid-friendly. The closest point of comparison might be “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, at least in terms of the adolescent friendship angle. The problem is I’m just not into magician/wizard magic stuff and that’s the bulk of the book. The other part is boarding school antics, which I also can’t get invested in. I bought this on a whim at a book sale years ago so I didn’t realize that this was full of plot devices I don’t care about until I was too far into the book to stop. It’s just not for me.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
This was my first time reading Straub. There was a lot I liked and some stuff that I thought was okay. Overall I love the idea of real magic being intertwined with stage magic and some of the crossover that might exist between the two worlds. Tom was a compelling protagonist who seemed older than the 14 year old he was in the novel, which we can chalk up to the story being told by an adult. I liked the setting and the themes explored in the novel. On the flip side there was some disorientation as Tom went through the experiences in Shadowland. It seems intentional by the author but grew frustrating at times trying to follow Tom through fairy tale fever dreams. Also the build up of certain characters made the conclusions of their stories fall a bit flat for me. Overall I enjoyed it.
Excellent, but I can't give it five stars--many passages dragged, the ending was a loose bundle of WTF, and a lot of stuff really heavily set up in the beginning just kind of fell by the wayside. Where Dark Matter did the same kind of thing, but in a way that wouldn't let me go.
God, in the orthodox view, causes famine, plague, and flood. Was God evil? Evil is a convenient fiction.
Scions of privilege ride the rails after Hogwarts becomes Columbine.
Master wizard is defeated by Harry Potter after the latter is crucified.
I honestly wish I was making this shit up. I don't understand the allure of this book. Is it about aging and the vanishing magic of life?
Perhaps, it is also bloated and ridiculous. It is likely for best to step away from the portrayal of women, yet I want to consider such. Before anyone asks there are “Magic negroes” but the treatment is evenhanded. Yet again we have an all powerful entity fallen by a pesky kid. We understand this from the opening pages and yet we inveigh against the inertia of hundreds of pages before the conflagration. The trip east appears to be connective tissue linking two distinct narratives despite that ubiquitous haunting owl—a pan-dimensional predator drone.
Scions of privilege ride the rails after Hogwarts becomes Columbine.
Master wizard is defeated by Harry Potter after the latter is crucified.
I honestly wish I was making this shit up. I don't understand the allure of this book. Is it about aging and the vanishing magic of life?
Perhaps, it is also bloated and ridiculous. It is likely for best to step away from the portrayal of women, yet I want to consider such. Before anyone asks there are “Magic negroes” but the treatment is evenhanded. Yet again we have an all powerful entity fallen by a pesky kid. We understand this from the opening pages and yet we inveigh against the inertia of hundreds of pages before the conflagration. The trip east appears to be connective tissue linking two distinct narratives despite that ubiquitous haunting owl—a pan-dimensional predator drone.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced