Rhiannon
Inventive but also deeply irritating! Weird architecture is always fascinating to me, from liminal spaces to cosmic elder god cities to structures with hidden rooms and passageways, so this book, on the surface seemed right for me.
Unfortunately, the characters’ wildly hysterical speculations that just somehow magically seem normal(?) and not at all histrionic (my god so over the top) was making my eyes roll so much. It kinda reminded me of how my best friend and I in our late teens and early ‘20s would make up wildly silly conspiracy theories about the most mundane of things and then laugh at our nutty inventiveness.
I mean, strange architecture is strange, sure. But this book’s absurdities just go on and on and somehow the two earnest amateur sleuths amazingly are never too over the top in their melodramatic hypothesizing. I'd have actually bought into it more if it had turned out to be a liminal space trope. Alas, this is not that.
And then when you get to the actual history and motivations behind the alleged perpetrators it’s just more implausible nonsense and behaviour that I was giggling at, which I don’t think was the writer’s intention? Meh, what do I know though?
The book is a very fast read even though it’s at a fairly normal 200 pages. This is because the drawings of the house are redundantly repeated over and over. Some of the illustrations do have differences, but honestly the main drawings (like the one on the cover) must be repeated at least 8 or 9 times in the book, which is kind of unnecessary padding.
Weirdly enough, I think I'd still read some of Uketsu's other books. They're kind of like junk food? Anyway, it was a mildly entertaining fast read, but I do wish it hadn’t been so over the top in its plot. Just don’t go in expecting too much from this.
Originally posted at www.amazon.ca.
Inventive but also deeply irritating! Weird architecture is always fascinating to me, from liminal spaces to cosmic elder god cities to structures with hidden rooms and passageways, so this book, on the surface seemed right for me.
Unfortunately, the characters’ wildly hysterical speculations that just somehow magically seem normal(?) and not at all histrionic (my god so over the top) was making my eyes roll so much. It kinda reminded me of how my best friend and I in our late teens and early ‘20s would make up wildly silly conspiracy theories about the most mundane of things and then laugh at our nutty inventiveness.
I mean, strange architecture is strange, sure. But this book’s absurdities just go on and on and somehow the two earnest amateur sleuths amazingly are never too over the top in their melodramatic hypothesizing. I'd have actually bought into it more if it had turned out to be a liminal space trope. Alas, this is not that.
And then when you get to the actual history and motivations behind the alleged perpetrators it’s just more implausible nonsense and behaviour that I was giggling at, which I don’t think was the writer’s intention? Meh, what do I know though?
The book is a very fast read even though it’s at a fairly normal 200 pages. This is because the drawings of the house are redundantly repeated over and over. Some of the illustrations do have differences, but honestly the main drawings (like the one on the cover) must be repeated at least 8 or 9 times in the book, which is kind of unnecessary padding.
Weirdly enough, I think I'd still read some of Uketsu's other books. They're kind of like junk food? Anyway, it was a mildly entertaining fast read, but I do wish it hadn’t been so over the top in its plot. Just don’t go in expecting too much from this.
Originally posted at www.amazon.ca.
