Pål Hernes Fiva

“It is sort of an atrocity contest.”

Despite some major flaws (one of the villains is immersion-breakingly one-dimensional), it is so much fun!

Noe av styrken til boken ble et problem for meg; grundigheten i beskrivelsen av diverse forkvaklede teorier gjorde slitsomt å lese. Samtidig viser bredden og grundigheten hvor seiglivet dårlige ideer kan være. Boken var for meg mest interessant når den kobler sammen ulike emner (historie, filosofi, økonomi) og viser hvordan disse påvirket ideene om raser.

Seneca: “Far too many good brains have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge.”

Abandoned after 200 pages. Loads of conspiracies sounds fun, but when the narrator/protagonist is so vile the stakes become curiously low, and the sheer amount of conspiracies end up being a slog. If I wanted to read misanthropic conspiracies without any sort of human understanding, I could just browse the worst parts of the internet.

Just not interesting enough. Who cares what fiction writers thought about a hypothetical concept hundred years ago? Only worthwhile idea: the concept of time travel is a modern invention.

Lettlest, konkret og engasjerende bok som jeg håper/tror kan fungere for mange. Har ikke angst selv, men også for meg var det interessant å lese om opplevelse og behandling.

Really wanted to love it. Love reading about it more than reading it. Some of it will stay with me, but far too much was just a pointless slog (for me).

Update after a few months: ...but the parts that stay with me, making me return to the text and reframing my own life in a way that is impossible to ignore. I guess I sort of love it?

It kept me interested for about two thirds, but the final third was a slog as the story became increasingly predictable. For a story about occult knowledge and the power of intuition is especially disappointing that the author feels the need to spell things out. Disappointed.

Reads like capitalist critique/wish fulfilment/power fantasy. All the bad people are one dimensional baddies that are completely uninteresting. For a book which aims so much bile at individuals accruing so much wealth it is hilarious that the main love interest turns out to be secretely wealthy all along. See? Rich people can be nice too!

Ikke uten kvaliteter, men etter alt for mange personer, steder og konsepter tilsynelatende uten stor påvirkning på plottet ga jeg opp etter ca 150 sider. Fine stemningsbyggende scener og potensielt interessant vri på norrøn mytologi.

Too silly. Just one example from the wikipedia synopsis:

“Agnes planned to dress as the Bleeding Nun, a ghost who haunts the castle and exits its gates at midnight. Raymond accidentally eloped with the real ghost of the real Bleeding Nun. Exorcizing the ghost of the Bleeding Nun required assistance from the Wandering Jew.”

A competent collection of sci-fi tropes, featuring an impossibly naive (faux-naïf?) narrator. Nothing new under the sun.

«...only like an unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep himself awake.»

The mystery is compelling, but grows increasingly ridiculous and the ending is just silly. Terribly disappointing after a promising promise.

Middle part is good, but Roth exhausts the subject and then the reader.

This kind of snuck up on me; didn't think I cared about the characters but I was crying by the end. Left me absolutely devastated.

Extremely verbose, long winded story about cleverest/smuggest man alive(who is also blind! Amazing!) who solves crimes (while blind! Amazing!) in the exciting world of coin fetishists etc, featuring ridiculous stereotypes. Only recommended if you are excited by numismatics.

Important and interesting, but the heavy content and the digressive, circuitous and reiterative writing style meant I spent 7 (!) years reading the book. I persisted, though, which I guess is a testament to the book's quality.

Builds slowly to a crescendo that is entirely predictable. For a “weird tale” it is not weird enough.

Phenomenally entertaining, but the last part does not work on any level. The ending is almost literally that it was all a dream, only that the protagonist's entire personality was also “dreamt”. Too silly.

Slow, intense burn.

Promising at first, but the messianic nature of the protagonist leads to a curiously two dimensional story for all the talk of schemes within schemes and the mystical mumbo jumbo. Disappointed!

Narcissistic, solipsistic, self-serving, superficial, glib and tone deaf.

Genius.

Somewhat interesting throughout, but never more than that.

Strangely conservative criticism of a subset of American culture: the rich and how difficult it is to get richer and more successful while maintaining a work-life balance. And some sort of “identity”, while it is really all about their id.