Eduardo Santiago
Astonishing, powerful, gripping, and increasingly more so on all counts as the book went on. The pacing, for one, is phenomenal: started off intriguing, then kept developing, gradually, mercilessly. I felt more absorbed with each chapter. It's not so much the what—we know there’s going to be bad shit, or, more precisely, we know there was a lot of bad shit and some of it is going to get shown to us—no, it's the how: how do good people live with those memories? How do they live, day after day, with monsters?
The first-person narrator is a gem. Honorable, hardworking, capable, and deeply moral. I kept thinking of him as an embodiment of Stoic ideals, wondering if Forna has read Epictetus and Seneca. (Did I say "him"? Yes: Forna writes a completely believable male protagonist, with access to his rawest feelings and motivations. How can she do that?) (Okay, maybe a touch more sensitive than most males, but not impossibly so.) The rest of the characters are... well, they’re props. Lovable or despicable despite their lack of depth; this isn’t their story.
TW for cruelty, violence, heartbreak and suffering galore. Highly, highly recommended regardless.
Astonishing, powerful, gripping, and increasingly more so on all counts as the book went on. The pacing, for one, is phenomenal: started off intriguing, then kept developing, gradually, mercilessly. I felt more absorbed with each chapter. It's not so much the what—we know there’s going to be bad shit, or, more precisely, we know there was a lot of bad shit and some of it is going to get shown to us—no, it's the how: how do good people live with those memories? How do they live, day after day, with monsters?
The first-person narrator is a gem. Honorable, hardworking, capable, and deeply moral. I kept thinking of him as an embodiment of Stoic ideals, wondering if Forna has read Epictetus and Seneca. (Did I say "him"? Yes: Forna writes a completely believable male protagonist, with access to his rawest feelings and motivations. How can she do that?) (Okay, maybe a touch more sensitive than most males, but not impossibly so.) The rest of the characters are... well, they’re props. Lovable or despicable despite their lack of depth; this isn’t their story.
TW for cruelty, violence, heartbreak and suffering galore. Highly, highly recommended regardless.
