Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by booking_along
Medici - Die Kunst der Intrige by Matteo Strukul
1.0
Once again -since i stated it in the first book of this series as well- the book i read was translated from the original italian into german so maybe some of what i am saying here is NOT how the original book is but something that "happened" in translation...
Lets just go right into the lists:
The Okay:
- the writing
as in the first part of this series this second book is similarly written. Easy to read, fast to get through and not in any way written in a way that makes it complicated or hard to read. so that's nice.
The not so great to "how is this a published book?":
- the facts
If any of you read the review i wrote for the first book in this series i ranted a bit about how this author kept to true to the facts in the first book and that made the book a almost unreadable because nothing felt alive enough to actually engage the reader into the story.
WELL this book had basically the direct opposite problem of that.
In this book the author really took SO MANY liberties with "facts" that it if there would be even just a touch of magic in it it would be clearly labelled fantasy and not only fiction.
Now i get that historical fiction is about taking some facts and working around those.
I GET IT!
I complained about it with the first book that the author didn't actually do that.
But while there is too little of something there is also WAY TO MUCH of something.
And in this book? The author gone from way, way too little to "WE OFFICIALLY LEFT OUR KNOWN SOLAR SYSTEM!"
Maybe i am just too picky?
Possible.
Maybe i just don't get along with this series?
Possible.
Maybe the author overshoot with this book in the worst way?
Possible.
No idea which one it is.
- the characters
Where that bit better compared to the first one.
But overall in the general book-verse?
Not great.
Still very, very flat feeling to me. I still did not care at all for any of them because non of them felt like actual characters to me that i could get involved in their lives and stories with because they just didn't feel like something that was real. ... Does anyone even understand what i am trying to say?
Lets just say it could have been better, especially if the author didn't constantly make women out to be a sex toy with a pulse. Maybe then i would actually like those books a bit more. Quiet possible. Who knows? (I do! I would!)
- the plot...
once again this book felt -as the first one (am i repeating myself a lot or does it just feel like that to me?)- more like individual little stories instead of an actual connect big one. We had once again big time jumps where we didn't really get any connecting informations and it felt to me like the author simply didn't or want to write anything anymore during that one time so he just jumped right ahead a few months or years into a new time so that he had something new to write about.
Sorry that doesn't work for me.
I like my story and plot to actually feel like it connects completely throughout an entire book. And this one didn't have that, the overall plot felt more like a handful of different smaller plots sprinkled throughout this book with no real connection.
Not my thing, personally.
All in all?
Yeah no... sorry. Not a fan.
I think this can be done better and sadly this author doesn't seem to manage.
I will read the third one in real -and i am sure unrealistic hopes- that the third one might be the charm and he finds this middle ground of the two extreme that were book one and two in this series so far.
But i wouldn't recommend this. There are WAY better historical fictions out there that handle similar plots and ideas. So if you are interested in this type of story read one of those, you save yourself a lot of time and possibly money.
Lets just go right into the lists:
The Okay:
- the writing
as in the first part of this series this second book is similarly written. Easy to read, fast to get through and not in any way written in a way that makes it complicated or hard to read. so that's nice.
The not so great to "how is this a published book?":
- the facts
If any of you read the review i wrote for the first book in this series i ranted a bit about how this author kept to true to the facts in the first book and that made the book a almost unreadable because nothing felt alive enough to actually engage the reader into the story.
WELL this book had basically the direct opposite problem of that.
In this book the author really took SO MANY liberties with "facts" that it if there would be even just a touch of magic in it it would be clearly labelled fantasy and not only fiction.
Now i get that historical fiction is about taking some facts and working around those.
I GET IT!
I complained about it with the first book that the author didn't actually do that.
But while there is too little of something there is also WAY TO MUCH of something.
And in this book? The author gone from way, way too little to "WE OFFICIALLY LEFT OUR KNOWN SOLAR SYSTEM!"
Maybe i am just too picky?
Possible.
Maybe i just don't get along with this series?
Possible.
Maybe the author overshoot with this book in the worst way?
Possible.
No idea which one it is.
- the characters
Where that bit better compared to the first one.
But overall in the general book-verse?
Not great.
Still very, very flat feeling to me. I still did not care at all for any of them because non of them felt like actual characters to me that i could get involved in their lives and stories with because they just didn't feel like something that was real. ... Does anyone even understand what i am trying to say?
Lets just say it could have been better, especially if the author didn't constantly make women out to be a sex toy with a pulse. Maybe then i would actually like those books a bit more. Quiet possible. Who knows? (I do! I would!)
- the plot...
once again this book felt -as the first one (am i repeating myself a lot or does it just feel like that to me?)- more like individual little stories instead of an actual connect big one. We had once again big time jumps where we didn't really get any connecting informations and it felt to me like the author simply didn't or want to write anything anymore during that one time so he just jumped right ahead a few months or years into a new time so that he had something new to write about.
Sorry that doesn't work for me.
I like my story and plot to actually feel like it connects completely throughout an entire book. And this one didn't have that, the overall plot felt more like a handful of different smaller plots sprinkled throughout this book with no real connection.
Not my thing, personally.
All in all?
Yeah no... sorry. Not a fan.
I think this can be done better and sadly this author doesn't seem to manage.
I will read the third one in real -and i am sure unrealistic hopes- that the third one might be the charm and he finds this middle ground of the two extreme that were book one and two in this series so far.
But i wouldn't recommend this. There are WAY better historical fictions out there that handle similar plots and ideas. So if you are interested in this type of story read one of those, you save yourself a lot of time and possibly money.