I lack the necessary tools to explain to you why me, someone who only read YA his whole life and then somewhere halfway through being 22 years old decided to pickup seriously reading again, thinks that this might be in the top ten pieces of writing ever written, so what I will do instead is just share some things I wanted to disorderly throw into this obligatory review.
There were multiple times during reading before I ended up getting used to mcarthys style (don't make this your first book of his please lol) where I would reread a page five or six times trying to make sense of the insanely dense prose only to realize what I'm reading is just the thirtieth time our characters are riding horses through the desert, but it's written in like the most beautiful way you've ever seen
I really didn't enjoy this, however, the last third of the book did get a lot lot lot better, and by the end I thought it wrapped up nicely
I gotta be honest I hated the first two chapters of this book. The way Vonnegut writes from his own perspective is insuferable to me. Something about his attittude screams “Funky uncle who would have loved Warhol” and its absolutley the most annoying thing Ive ever read in my life. All this being said, anytme that the perspective shifts to the book within a book (It only goes back to Vonnegut for more than a sentance twice after this) , it's amazing. Theres a lot to be said about this book but I actually decided Im gonna save long reviews for when I get really passionate.
There could be an argument to be made about how as a standalone story, this book isnt really that strong. I disagree with this notion, and I ask that anyone who happens upon this review considers what I have to say. The first entry in the Discworld series has a very strong and fast paced opening, a pretty decent middle section, and a pretty great closing section. It ends on a cliffhanger, and there are a lot of questions that are left unanswered, but why should this matter? Art is a constantly evolving thing, and whether you lame death of the author nerds like it or not, art is and will always will be inextricably linked to its artist. In the same way that the Discworld grows, so does Pratchett, and so treating this as a standalone story makes no sense to me. That being said, I had a lot of fun with this book and it got me excited to learn all about the world inside it.
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