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A review by lbarsk
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
4.0
Upon reading for the second time, I stand by my 2013 rating of four stars!
I absolutely love the "finding humanity" aspect of this novel, and the time period is ONE OF MY FAVES, and hello I'm a sucker for anything Golem-related. So I think the thing that keeps me from a full five stars is how FAST some things in the book happen. E.g., in all of the Big Action Scenes I had to read through a couple times to fully get what was taking place. Or, a serious thing would take place (someone dying) and then we'd immediately move on.
I get that this is how life is, and it was *extremely* clever to have language mirror the way life moves; Wecker deserves SERIOUS praise for her language. But it did give me a feeling of things rushing past when this whole world was one that I would've loved to linger in longer.
I will say -- in most books I think the ending resolves much too quickly, and there's not enough sense of an "after," which is why I turn so often to fanfic. This book does not have that problem, and I find its ending wholly lovely.
I absolutely love the "finding humanity" aspect of this novel, and the time period is ONE OF MY FAVES, and hello I'm a sucker for anything Golem-related. So I think the thing that keeps me from a full five stars is how FAST some things in the book happen. E.g., in all of the Big Action Scenes I had to read through a couple times to fully get what was taking place. Or, a serious thing would take place (someone dying) and then we'd immediately move on.
I get that this is how life is, and it was *extremely* clever to have language mirror the way life moves; Wecker deserves SERIOUS praise for her language. But it did give me a feeling of things rushing past when this whole world was one that I would've loved to linger in longer.
I will say -- in most books I think the ending resolves much too quickly, and there's not enough sense of an "after," which is why I turn so often to fanfic. This book does not have that problem, and I find its ending wholly lovely.