M

While the content hit a lot of interesting points, I could not get behind the structure of the series. Framing the discussion as a conversation made it feel disorganized. Also, i'm not sure if some details have aged well- thinking of “the Indians and their primitive ways” and the psychoanalysing. I am intrigued to read more of Campbell but it isnt free from critique for me.

I TRIED to like this book, and gave 3 starts to emphasize that because if nothing else, I got through it fairly quickly and therefore had the attention span to do so. I was rooting for this book at first, but it just fell into the same old love triangles when the basic premise could have been expanded in much better ways. To clarify, I do enjoy romance novels, but I saw this book as a basic attempt to twist the same sappy idea into a sci-fi form.

I feel sort of bad rating this but I don't think guilt should keep me from being honest...the dead can't be free from criticism. This book felt like a long rant, like a big scribble. At the same time, it felt too clean.

It felt like a lot of the book was little conversations that didn't drive the plot and barely revealed anything about the characters. Every person said things typical to their “character” and Craig rambled on and everyone thought what he was saying was great. In regards to it being clean, it was far too simple of a story. It's strange that an author who wrote this after his own dark and personal experience with depression wrote such a happy near-perfect ending. While Craig says at the end that his depression isn't cured, everything in his life magically fell into place and every problem was magically solved. All his sources of stress were fixed! It was so far from reality.

This novel was written in the spirit of hope. I'm very optimistic, so I can get it, but also I have a more realist perspective that prevented me from enjoying this.

This book was really good and I would read again but good lord the very end got to me- I probably would have given it 4 stars otherwise. It had me in tears, it touched my heart...yada yada.

The protagonist struggles with Naoko's death and the fact that his heart wants him to move on with Midori but he feels guilty. And then out of the blue he sleeps with Reiko repeatedly before feeling ready to move on and call Midori. Like, what? By sleeping with Reiko he feels ready to move on with Midori?

Ok.

There are a lot of criticisms in other reviews that cover my other concerns with the book, and it was slow at times - but all in all it was a decent, eloquent novel.