_moumou_ 's review for:

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
3.0
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes

i will start off by saying that the prose is wonderful and i really enjoyed the use of second person

honestly, i think this probably deserves more like a 4, but going into it knowing no sri lankan history and only the basics of south asian religion and folk lore i just constantly felt like the story was going over my head. which, i admit, is totally my fault. that being said, it has A LOT of characters and you do need to remember basically all of them and their relations to each other. i feel like if it either focused on fewer characters, or i’d had more background knowledge going in, it would have been much easier to follow - but the combination of both left me feeling a bit lost most of the time.

but i could tell this was a problem mostly with my knowledge, not with the book itself. i may revisit eventually it after doing some background reading.