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A review by pineapplecake
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Did not finish book.
DNF @60%
There’s so much I can say about why this book didn’t work for me, in either format — audio/paper, I even tried hybrid. That’s how determined I was to push through and finally finish this— but I’m so exhausted from trying that now, after calling time of death at 60% (~10 hrs of audio but really fcking 45 with how often I had to rewind and start a chapter over) I want to get as far away from this book as possible.
The writing is beautiful and lush— a quick scan of reviews will confirm this as something I think we all can agree on.
However it’s also floaty, aimless, anticlimactic, passive, redundant, SLOW SLOW SlOW, circular, confusing, and needlessly bogged down in overly descriptive prose such that it meanders and its unclear what all these words are focusing on. I tried. I tried — I didnt want to give up.
This was my third time trying to get through this book. But I was miserable constantly rewinding and rereading bc of how frequently I’d drift off and lose focus bc wdym there’s nested stories within stories within stories, and like 5 (6? 4? Idk) timelines and nothing makes sense by design?! No doubt the author is a brilliant writer, and you can tell she loved writing this. But as a reader, I needed the story to be more anchored and a plot with clear a purpose. This was not that.
To compound these issues and despite the praise the audiobook has received, I have to note/rant about the narrator, Hoffman. His narration was awkward and slow, which made this already very slow book, move at a glacial pace. I had the speed at 1.5x and it was still weirdly slow paced and hard to follow. His cadence and voice didn’t work here. He frequently had odd pauses after a few words per sentence, and I wanted him to just spit it out. No multitasking with this audiobook: his voice becomes background noise, making it very easy to drift away from the story and before long I was coming up with my grocery list in my head instead. His voice seemed better suited for a nature documentary. Hence why I tried reading instead of listening. Ultimately this story didn’t have enough plot or direction to make it worthwhile to keep on. And once I came to terms with that, I packed up and moved on.
But man, in my heart of hearts, I really really wanted to love this.
2.5 stars, from the 60% that I read— and that’s purely based on how gorgeous the writing is.
There’s so much I can say about why this book didn’t work for me, in either format — audio/paper, I even tried hybrid. That’s how determined I was to push through and finally finish this— but I’m so exhausted from trying that now, after calling time of death at 60% (~10 hrs of audio but really fcking 45 with how often I had to rewind and start a chapter over) I want to get as far away from this book as possible.
The writing is beautiful and lush— a quick scan of reviews will confirm this as something I think we all can agree on.
However it’s also floaty, aimless, anticlimactic, passive, redundant, SLOW SLOW SlOW, circular, confusing, and needlessly bogged down in overly descriptive prose such that it meanders and its unclear what all these words are focusing on. I tried. I tried — I didnt want to give up.
This was my third time trying to get through this book. But I was miserable constantly rewinding and rereading bc of how frequently I’d drift off and lose focus bc wdym there’s nested stories within stories within stories, and like 5 (6? 4? Idk) timelines and nothing makes sense by design?! No doubt the author is a brilliant writer, and you can tell she loved writing this. But as a reader, I needed the story to be more anchored and a plot with clear a purpose. This was not that.
To compound these issues and despite the praise the audiobook has received, I have to note/rant about the narrator, Hoffman. His narration was awkward and slow, which made this already very slow book, move at a glacial pace. I had the speed at 1.5x and it was still weirdly slow paced and hard to follow. His cadence and voice didn’t work here. He frequently had odd pauses after a few words per sentence, and I wanted him to just spit it out. No multitasking with this audiobook: his voice becomes background noise, making it very easy to drift away from the story and before long I was coming up with my grocery list in my head instead. His voice seemed better suited for a nature documentary. Hence why I tried reading instead of listening. Ultimately this story didn’t have enough plot or direction to make it worthwhile to keep on. And once I came to terms with that, I packed up and moved on.
But man, in my heart of hearts, I really really wanted to love this.
2.5 stars, from the 60% that I read— and that’s purely based on how gorgeous the writing is.