Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

2 reviews

applesaucecreachur's review

adventurous reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

Was this book good? Not really, no. Did I enjoy it? What the heck, yes.
This was my formal introduction to Salman Rushdie and his distinctive writing style. I found it both refreshing and aggravating. As a lover of generous space between periods, I appreciated how a single one of Rushdie's sentences could go on for paragraphs. This ambitious bending of rules was less endearing when it became rambling sheets of purple prose told from vacillating perspectives. These perspectives belonged to flat characters who made for decent but tooth-grittingly unlikeable plot devices. Impressively, the female characters took this a step further by serving as over-sexualized witnesses to the chaotic clash between the jinni and human worlds. Particularly the three female love interests, Dunia

/the Lightning Princess/Aasmaan Peri/Skyfairy

, Ella Manezes, and Alexandra Bliss Fariña/The Lady Philosopher (when a title unnecessarily includes the holder's gender, you can bet it was given by a man), were all significantly younger than their male lovers. And what's more, their author chose to highlight this. The male characters were flat, but the female characters were flatter... while still managing to have curves, of course.
Oh but characters and self-importance aside, Rushdie has a beautiful lilt to his prose and some of his philosophical musings landed with me (bits about time, about loving, about the nature of being human and of being, the like). I hope whoever finds this copy in a Little Free Library will both critique and enjoy their time in its pages. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Gore, Violence, Grief, and Sexual content

Minor: Sexual violence, Car accident, War, and Incest

cyan_altaria's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

While I did enjoy the book, it's not the greatest, and I don't think I'll ever re-read it.  There is a fair bit of lore-dumping, and while I found the lore interesting enough to keep reading, I'm not surprised if it bored other people.  I also liked the complex, atmosphere sentences, but they can be a bit hard to read.  Most of the book is very slow, and then the last fourth just comes out of nowhere.  I would have liked if

there was more build up to each of the dark jinni's deaths.  They felt glossed over because they all happened so quickly and without much detail.

  The two philosopher's seem to disappear from the book without much warring, which is kind of jarring.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Violence, and War

Minor: Chronic illness, Incest, and Sexism

Explaination on the content warnings: Murder: Teresa murders her husband in the backstory, and

murders several people during the jinn war.

War: There's a jinn war in the book. Violence: No war & murder without it. Chronic illness: Mr. Geronimo's rising curse feels like this, and

when it spreads to other people, it can be a bit intense.

Incest:

Dunia has sex with her descendant Mr. Geronimo. Granted, they are at least 20 generations apart, but it's still there.

Sexism: The dark jinni are sexist, but it's not really focused on.