Scan barcode
A review by qalminator
The Continent of Lies by James Morrow
3.0
The first part of this book was promising. The ending part was quite good. The part in the middle? Needed to be cut down by at least half, if not two thirds. Heck, maybe even 90%. That section just dragged on and on and on and on and on until I considered giving up on the book entirely. I was very surprised when, somewhere around the 80% mark, it actually became engaging and interesting.
Other reviewers indicate that this book is atypical of Morrow, and I do have another of his works on Kindle to see if I agree, but this one really needed to be cut down a lot to be workable. The best way I can recommend it is to read Part I, find an online summary of Part II, then go to Part III. In that way, you would skip over the worst part of the book and get the good parts.
A few other comments:
One of the more bizarre things was the choice of names for far-future things. The names are mostly comical, leading one to expect something on the order of a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy style romp. If it was intended to be this, it did not work at all for me. There were occasional amusing snippets, surrounded by lengthy diatribes and nonsensical action.
Another bizarre thing was in the author's afterword, where he claims that the book was to caution against the danger of nuclear weapons. I've been trying to wrap my head around that for half a day now, with no real luck. My best guess is that they are a sort of, oh, bad dream of reality. Even that doesn't really work. So... yeah.
Other reviewers indicate that this book is atypical of Morrow, and I do have another of his works on Kindle to see if I agree, but this one really needed to be cut down a lot to be workable. The best way I can recommend it is to read Part I, find an online summary of Part II, then go to Part III. In that way, you would skip over the worst part of the book and get the good parts.
A few other comments:
One of the more bizarre things was the choice of names for far-future things. The names are mostly comical, leading one to expect something on the order of a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy style romp. If it was intended to be this, it did not work at all for me. There were occasional amusing snippets, surrounded by lengthy diatribes and nonsensical action.
Another bizarre thing was in the author's afterword, where he claims that the book was to caution against the danger of nuclear weapons. I've been trying to wrap my head around that for half a day now, with no real luck. My best guess is that they are a sort of, oh, bad dream of reality. Even that doesn't really work. So... yeah.