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A review by wickedcestus
سقوط الملاك by Yukio Mishima, يوكيو ميشيما
3.0
If I had enjoyed the third book of this series, I probably would have waited to start the fourth. I might have wanted to savour it. As it is, I kind of just wanted to see how this absolutely baffling tetralogy would end.
This book follows in the same vein as the third book. Once again, major narrative events are swept through in mere sentences while pages and pages are spent describing inane objects. Last time, it was buildings. This time, it's boats. The boat sections are nowhere near as grating as the building sections were; however, the problem of summarizing the narrative becomes overwhelming. The second half of the plot absolutely flies by. Character intentions are introduced out of nowhere. It's a mess.
However, in the end, I do think it all came together this time in a way the third book did not. The highlights are two incredible scenes, both revolving around pivotal conversations between characters that bounce off of each other in strange ways. The final conversation at the end of the book seems to have clearly been planned from the very beginning of Book One. It is somewhat jarring to return to that world, since Books Three and Four have been so different, but it is satisfying nonetheless.
While all of the books have a sort of stumbling clumsiness to them, the first one felt like it probed the central point with the most depth. After that, the treatment seemed to become shallower and shallower until, in the end, disappearing into almost nothing at all.
This book follows in the same vein as the third book. Once again, major narrative events are swept through in mere sentences while pages and pages are spent describing inane objects. Last time, it was buildings. This time, it's boats. The boat sections are nowhere near as grating as the building sections were; however, the problem of summarizing the narrative becomes overwhelming. The second half of the plot absolutely flies by. Character intentions are introduced out of nowhere. It's a mess.
However, in the end, I do think it all came together this time in a way the third book did not. The highlights are two incredible scenes, both revolving around pivotal conversations between characters that bounce off of each other in strange ways. The final conversation at the end of the book seems to have clearly been planned from the very beginning of Book One. It is somewhat jarring to return to that world, since Books Three and Four have been so different, but it is satisfying nonetheless.
While all of the books have a sort of stumbling clumsiness to them, the first one felt like it probed the central point with the most depth. After that, the treatment seemed to become shallower and shallower until, in the end, disappearing into almost nothing at all.