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aditurbo 's review for:
The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova
DNF. I can't continue reading this novel. The characters lack personality, there is no plot, the premise is idiotic - who in their right mind will, as soon as they land in a foreign country and after many hours of flight, would go on a country-wide tour to give back something that a complete stranger left behind instead of handing it over to the police or leave it at the hotel next to which it was found? And why would a cab driver collaborate in this search for days and days without getting any pay? I understand that the book is supposed to tell us about cruel and harrowing historical times in Bulgaria (don't want to spoil things so I won't elaborate). So why not just tell this story? Why did Kostova need the boring and unbelievable framework story to lean on, which ended up taking a huge part and focus in the novel? Also, the writing is pretty awful, with too many unnecessary details and descriptions that add nothing to the story, no convincing explanations to characters' choices and behaviors, and so on. Don't want to waste any more of my time on this.