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A review by leahsbooks
A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling
2.0
I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley. I am providing an honest review voluntarily.
The premise of the book sounded great. The bones of the story were good, but there were definitely some things I didn't like about the book.
TRIGGER WARNING: bombing, gore, sexual assault, and death of pets
First and foremost, the text was overly descriptive, and and was heavily overburdened by information that was unrelated to the plot. The descriptions were so incredibly detailed that it took me off topic and made it easy for the plot to get lost. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, leading to chapters that were excessively long and kind of boring. The entire story is narrated through the point of view of various characters, including two pet dogs. The chapter with the dogs really lost me. As much as I love dogs, the story being told from their point of view involved complex humanized emotions that wasn't believable.
The entire time I read, I waited to find out what actually happened. The story went from the future and worked backwards, with scattered periods out of order. I found myself often getting distracted, and waiting for something to happen. There was a lot of focus on the status of a woman who was sexually assaulted, and I didn't especially love how it was handled by any of the characters. When the end of the book finally arrived, the final chapter would have been sufficient, except for the presence of an epilogue that was completely unnecessary.
Overall, the book had so much potential, but maybe because it was originally written in a language other than it was translated to, it left something lacking for me.
The premise of the book sounded great. The bones of the story were good, but there were definitely some things I didn't like about the book.
TRIGGER WARNING: bombing, gore, sexual assault, and death of pets
First and foremost, the text was overly descriptive, and and was heavily overburdened by information that was unrelated to the plot. The descriptions were so incredibly detailed that it took me off topic and made it easy for the plot to get lost. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, leading to chapters that were excessively long and kind of boring. The entire story is narrated through the point of view of various characters, including two pet dogs. The chapter with the dogs really lost me. As much as I love dogs, the story being told from their point of view involved complex humanized emotions that wasn't believable.
The entire time I read, I waited to find out what actually happened. The story went from the future and worked backwards, with scattered periods out of order. I found myself often getting distracted, and waiting for something to happen. There was a lot of focus on the status of a woman who was sexually assaulted, and I didn't especially love how it was handled by any of the characters. When the end of the book finally arrived, the final chapter would have been sufficient, except for the presence of an epilogue that was completely unnecessary.
Overall, the book had so much potential, but maybe because it was originally written in a language other than it was translated to, it left something lacking for me.