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nicuch 's review for:
The Mountain Shadow
by Gregory David Roberts
Really struggling between 1 or 2 stars so I'm just gonna round up 1,5 because I'm feeling generous, but this was a major disappointment. The entire time I was trying to understand why Shantaram needed a sequel, let alone such a long one and at the end I can confidently say that it didn't. The 100 pages of relevant plot in this could've been included in the first book if they cut some stuff out of that one or just split it in 2 shorter ones.
So much of this book was just irrelevant stories about irrelevant people to the point that when you finally reached an actual plotline or its resolution it was hard to make yourself care for it, because it was not worth all the lack of substance it took to get there. Just like 1st book could've gotten away with the length, because it was a story about escaping felon, India, and philosophy, this one had next to none of that? India was no longer that important part of the story, Lin was just doing things for a lot of the time (the amount of times his way from point A to point B is described in detail is ridiculous) with no interesting direction or purpose, and philosophical stuff I'm not particularly familiar with or invested in, but as much as I did read them with interest in the 1st book, here I just did not care.
And I do understand that this is a fictionalized autobiography, but the form just doesn't work. Either it's a fictional story with plot, main characters etc.; a collection of short stories about people he met along the way OR an autobiography it can't be all 3.
So much of this book was just irrelevant stories about irrelevant people to the point that when you finally reached an actual plotline or its resolution it was hard to make yourself care for it, because it was not worth all the lack of substance it took to get there. Just like 1st book could've gotten away with the length, because it was a story about escaping felon, India, and philosophy, this one had next to none of that? India was no longer that important part of the story, Lin was just doing things for a lot of the time (the amount of times his way from point A to point B is described in detail is ridiculous) with no interesting direction or purpose, and philosophical stuff I'm not particularly familiar with or invested in, but as much as I did read them with interest in the 1st book, here I just did not care.
And I do understand that this is a fictionalized autobiography, but the form just doesn't work. Either it's a fictional story with plot, main characters etc.; a collection of short stories about people he met along the way OR an autobiography it can't be all 3.