Parts of this I really liked. The family dynamics were great. Lots of quippy dialog and great writing. Dante and Aristotle are incredibly likable.
There is a lot of teenage angst along the lines of “No one understands me. I don't understand anyone. My parents are weird,” that the protagonists thankfully grows past. They go through a phase of reading intense manly literature (Heart of Darkness, War and Peace, etc.) I feel like it needed either a longer ending, or an epilogue. There is a long lead up to Aristotle and Dante becoming a couple, but then they kiss, and the story ends rapidly. There's also a pretty strong characterization of Aristotle being asexual - the way he hesitates to describe his feelings toward Dante as romantic, the way he talks about kissing and masturabtion, how he feels alienated from other boys who have seemingly bizarre feelings towards girls and sex. It would have made a great addition to further explore that and how it would affect their relationship, but instead Ari's parents literally tell him that he is in love with Dante, and then there is a tidy kiss scene that closes the book. Feels like a missed opportunity.
Over all I enjoyed it, it is also an excellent audio book narration.
This reads like a long list of things that happen to Patricia. Patricia went to Oxford. Tricia met Mark. Pat met Bee. Tricia had four children. Pat wrote travel books about Italy. The background of her life is interesting, such as nuclear attacks on Miami and Kiev, an alternate assassination of Kennedy, but the overall style of the book becomes tedious. The parallel lives are an interesting concept, but are barely addressed, leading to a feeling of reading two plotlines simultaneously without a satisfying intersection. You might as well read two books at the same time to get a similar effect.
I really liked this. However, I had a real problem keeping the characters straight.
Conversations were kind of a mess. Imagine a rapid conversation between 2-16 newly introduced characters, where the characters are referred to alternatively by their titles, first names, last names, nicknames, or just their house number. I assumed I would adjust as we learned more about each character, but even past the halfway mark I kept finding myself going back to the online character guide to figure out who belonged to what house, who was a necromancer and who a cavalier. At one point I thought that Dulcinea's nickname was Corona, though that is an entirely different character. Later I was often confused if Coronabeth was one of the twins, or the twins' cavalier. It was incredibly confusing to sort out the cast of characters, and thus everyone's motivation except the two main characters was largely a lost cause. I was so relieved anytime it was just Gideon and Harrow cursing at each other, which were also by far the best parts of the novel.
At one point it seemed like even the author couldn't keep the characters straight- Harrow says to Palamedes “Sextus, your necromancer is wounded,” when Sextus is the necro, and his cavalier is the one wounded?
I am looking forward to the sequel. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the universe I am looking forward to seeing fleshed out.
Very short, finished it in a couple of days. I really enjoyed parts of it, especially the parts about the protagonist's childhood and relationship with his father. The writing is beautiful, but the I feel the subject matter would appeal to few.
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