Oh boy. This book was not for me. I’ll start this review with some of my comments from the CBR book club, and expound a little from there.
“I’m a little over halfway through and I will power through because I am a completist but I don’t like this book. It is a slog. I like plot and character development and I don’t see how this has either. We learn about the characters but they just “are.” The development happens as they slooowly reveal things about each other to each other, but for me it is just stagnant and at a snail’s pace. I don’t typically read fantasy for all these reasons, so I’m definitely not the audience. This book has yet to hook me: it just comes across as very disjointed and jarring.”
Now that I’ve powered through (and I really do mean powered through, with teeth grit and determination), my opinion stands firm. I didn’t like this book. Das was not very deft with the non-linear structure: the gaps between jumping back and forth were too long. I stopped caring about what was happening in either space. And ugh, all the bodily fluids! Another Cannonballer summed it up pretty well.
Malin, you nailed it. “There was such a focus on all sorts of bodily fluids and excretions and I had more of an issue with the long-winded and seemingly graphic descriptions of that than the violence, as such.”
To me it doesn’t work in this medium. I enjoy some gory and uncomfortable things: “Grindhouse” is one of my favorite movies, and I have seen just about every episode of SVU. But I wouldn’t want to read that level of detail, and don’t enjoy it here. It was jarring and distracting from the story. I just didn’t really see that point.
I was told I shouldn’t write off fantasy because of this book, so I won’t, and hopefully I can find another book in the genre that I like. But hey, it is one more book that I read this year, so bully for me. And huzzah for good discussion!