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A review by delore
His Name was Death by Rafael Bernal
3.0
I found the concept of this book surreal, Kafkaesque and fantastic. Bernal somehow manages to make sections that are essentially stylised as extended scientific explanations of an absurd regime of authoritarian mosquitoes some of the most engaging/best-written sections of the book. All at the same time, these sections are written in such a way to come across as serious and objective without devolving into pure slapstick (the best way I can describe it is like reading a pop-science book that explores some hair-brained concept from a Thomas Pynchon novel).
That being said, I found some of the nihilistic/religious overtones of the book very hamfisted. The protagonist is written as a fairly cliched alcoholic, life-has-no-meaning type character - which in my view was not explored with much subtlety or originality.
So overall, the book skips along at a fairly fast pace due to the absurdity of its central ideas, but gets weighed down to some extent by cliches and heavy-handedness.
That being said, I found some of the nihilistic/religious overtones of the book very hamfisted. The protagonist is written as a fairly cliched alcoholic, life-has-no-meaning type character - which in my view was not explored with much subtlety or originality.
So overall, the book skips along at a fairly fast pace due to the absurdity of its central ideas, but gets weighed down to some extent by cliches and heavy-handedness.