Rafael

This book is very addictive. In the first part it carefully sets up the story piece by piece, and after a while you just watch in amazement as it all comes together. The characters are well fleshed out and act the way you'd expect them to act.

Both Michael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander's side of the story are interesting to read. I enjoyed when both threads were written in parallel, jumping from one to another inbetween paragraphs. What I think this book excels at is pacing.

When I say I couldn't put the book down, I mean it. When the dominoes started to fall, I had a hard time stopping to read. I'm a little afraid to buy the next one...

While I enjoyed "Ender's Game" and found the story captivating with its focus on the psychological aspects of war, it is hard to talk about it without acknowledging that it has a pretty problematic protrayal of women. Not only aren't a lot of non-male characters, those who are present are lacking in agency. It's a good book, but writen by someone with outdated views and that shows quite clearly.

It is the book that showed me I could like science fiction, so that's a big plus. I now discovered ones I enjoy a lot more. Those from Ursula K. Le Guin for example.

This is a children's book, but a wonderful one. I didn't expect to like this book or find its language accessible, considering it was written over 150 years ago. But I was wrong, it's easy to see how this book has held its place as a classic for so many years.

It's made to be read to children, it has a story that will have most kids asking for "just one more page" instead of falling asleep.

I've just finished this book and I already feel that it will stay with me for a long time. The story takes you through several countries, wars, relationships, hardships and loves. George R.R. Martin said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. [...]" If we take this quote literally, A Long Petal of the Sea brought me much closer to that goal.

The book also gave me a much better understanding of the past of Spain and Chile. Allende wrote a novel, but it touches on a lot of important real history. I sometimes checked what I'd just read on Wikipedia to see if it was true and to learn more about the events described. The author did her homework so well that you get a novel and a history lesson in one. The book also portrays the sadly ever-present issue of people being forced to flee their own country. It helps the reader to see other perspectives.

If you are interested in love stories, the hardships of war, people being both good and very, very bad, this book is for you. One of the criticisms I've heard about Isabel Allende is that her writing sometimes gets in the way of the story by using too many or convoluted metaphors. At least in this book, I don't agree with that. The writing was good, flowed with the story and never took center stage. The characters and environment did the telling.

Two things bothered me a little. One was the ending, it felt rushed and the book could have been finished a few pages earlier and I think it would have left a better impression. The second is that most of the time I couldn't hear the characters saying their dialog. With a few exceptions, it felt like they were mostly there to move the plot along.

All in all, I highly recommend this book and I'll probably try another one by Isabel Allende in the future.