zephyrsilver 's review for:

The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey

DID NOT FINISH

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This book is putting me into a reading slump. I read about 125 pages and that was a struggle. Unfortunately not a lot happens, but every so often a sort of cool thing is dangled over the readers head to get them to keep reading, waiting for the cool plot stuff but even as far as I got which was about a third of the book, I feel like the plot was just barely starting. It was mostly about Koli being in love with a girl and jealous of his friend. The stuff about the walking carnivorous plants is sort of glossed over.

In addition I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. By this I don’t mean word choice like I’ve seen a lot of people complain about. I don’t care about the slang being used. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me is the way this is written as Koli in the future telling us about his life. Because of this, everything felt very much like exposition and we never really got to know some of the other characters well because they’re talked about in a past, detached sort of way. Mostly we are just in Koli’s head as a teenage boy and oh man that’s not a fun place to be.

Maybe I’ll give this another try at some point when I’m feeling less slumpy but seeing as this book is what put me into a slump, I sort of doubt I’ll give it another try.