Erin
I listened to the audio version on my commute. If I'd been reading it anywhere else, there are about twenty different places I would have put it down, never to return. There were a lot of places where the story lagged significantly and Grossman focused intensely instead on his main character's lack of internal development. The main character wasn't evil, nor was he good. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was, but he certainly wasn't stupid. Mostly, he and his utter lack of ambition were just dull. I appreciate Grossman's love of the genre, and the world he created was interesting enough (and peppered with many references to classics of the genre), but I could not get past this bore of a main character.
I listened to the audio version on my commute. If I'd been reading it anywhere else, there are about twenty different places I would have put it down, never to return. There were a lot of places where the story lagged significantly and Grossman focused intensely instead on his main character's lack of internal development. The main character wasn't evil, nor was he good. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was, but he certainly wasn't stupid. Mostly, he and his utter lack of ambition were just dull. I appreciate Grossman's love of the genre, and the world he created was interesting enough (and peppered with many references to classics of the genre), but I could not get past this bore of a main character.