A review by benlundns
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

2.0

First, I loved all the scenes that took place in 1348-49. That stuff was great and felt real. The current day stuff felt like such a waste, and didn't feel like it really had any impact on the rest of the story. If you never heard of Tom or Sharon, the rest of the story is not effected in any way. And pretty much all of my problems were with those little asides. First, why do we need whole sections of the book that you can't understand unless you speak 2 or more languages. If you want the characters speaking a different language, cool. A little footnote would be nice. Just like you appreciate subtitles in a movie, it's nice to know what people are saying. Second, so much jargon. Both the characters are in very specialized academic fields, so 90% of the current time chapters are them expositing why whatever they are obsessing about is the most important thing ever. And it might make sense to try and understand some of it, if it had some relevance to the story, but IT DOESN'T, AND THE STORYLINES THAT GET STARTED DO NOT GET RESOLVED. (Can you tell that's a pet peeve of mine?) As a result, reading those passages, my eyes glazed over, and I started to skim. Just like you would do when reading a textbook for a class that you don't care about but is required in your curriculum.

I really wanted to like this book more, and I think if it was just a story of a village in the 1300's during the plague, it would be a decent and interesting read, but all the extra non-necessary stuff really drove down my excitement to read the book.