Kate

You can tell Flynn is brilliant. I had to stay up late to finish but it was worth it.

I hated the first few pages. So much purple prose. Something was described as “Sisyphean” and I had to roll my eyes.

But the book redeemed itself, with the plot and characters. I loved Graham and the expats and the concept of the ministry. I loved learning about the arctic expeditions.

Love this book. It reminded me of Robin McKinley's writing, and had wonderfully deep characters.

This book was “recommended” by Goodreads, but honestly, it was straight up terrible. I had to stop at page 26. The reader is constantly told how beautiful and talented the main character is, as well as how handsome everyone else is. In the very first paragraph, the main character is “Adarlan's most notorious assassin.” On the second page: “It was true that she had been attractive once, beautiful even, but – well, it didn't matter now, did it?” A little later, “She was important enough to warrant an execution from the Captain of the Royal Guard himself.” (Thanks for letting me know!)And, “She looked at her rags and stained skin, and she couldn't suppress the twinge of shame. What a miserable state for a girl of former beauty!” (Truly a tragedy!)And others are described thusly: “Yet there was something in his eyes, strikingly blue – the color of the waters of the southern countries – and the way they contrasted with his raven-black hair that made her pause. He was achingly handsome, and couldn't have been older than twenty. ‘Princes are not supposed to be handsome! They're sniveling, stupid, repulsive creatures. This one... this... How unfair of him to be royal and beautiful.'” (How unfair indeed!)That's only up to page 8. Nope, Nope, Nope. Edit: Almost forgot to add books that are actually worth reading. If you liked the idea of this book, read either [b: The Blue Sword 407813 The Blue Sword (Damar, #2) Robin McKinley https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1286927812s/407813.jpg 2321296] or [b: The Hero and the Crown 77366 The Hero and the Crown (Damar, #1) Robin McKinley https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386642407s/77366.jpg 2321243]

In the small, the writing is lovely. Arch observations and very funny scenes. But our main character manages to travel the entire world without living in it once.It has to be purposeful, but every time Arthur has to deal with something emotionally difficult, it's at arm's length: a hard conversation with someone who is dying happens over Zoom. A hard conversation with someone Arthur wronged, just never really happens. Arthur never talks to his best friend/arch nemesis apart from a few sentences. Yes, he's literally running away from his problems (that's the premise), but surely over the course of the novel something has to break.What would it be like to have to struggle to take care of a child? To take care of an elderly person? To stay committed to a single person for your whole life? To build a house with your own two hands? To revitalize a town, to save someone's life, to care for a rescue animal, to say what needs to be said, no matter how difficult? To pull the plug on someone, to accidentally hit someone with your car, to confront a rapist, etc etc. Arthur's story is devoid of most everything that makes life actually hard, so one of his biggest challenges is not being as attractive as he once was, and that makes the force of the novel quite weak, even if the writing is well done.I realized that perhaps this isn't entirely the fault of the character or the author. Among Arthur's friends, people are worn like clothes and are equally disposable. One must be young, attractive, fun at parties, not old and a bore. There's not really a sense of community through thick and thin, or room for disability or age (very young or very old). In some sense, Arthur's preoccupation with his age is a problem for him not because he is unusually vain, but because of the very real danger that he might be abandoned if he's no longer sparkly. I was disappointed that it ended with Arthur's boyfriend returning to him, since it seemed like the wrong thing for Arthur to learn. If it were more heterosexual, and a old superficial man was rewarded at the end with a hot young woman, I'd think that was awful. “Still got it!” is the wrong lesson. I would have liked to see Arthur stretched to become a larger person, like the protagonist in [b:Senlin Ascends 35271523 Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1) Josiah Bancroft https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1502224161l/35271523.SX50.jpg 24467682].