Charlie White
At about the 60% mark of this book, a character reflects that “familiarity breeds contempt.”
This is the problem with so many stories in the “cosmic horror” genre — as soon as the “mystery beyond words” is revealed by an unskilled author, that author has no tools but words to describe that which is inherently beyond words.
Sadly, this author takes the path of turning to gross-out gore and incredibly depressing violence, including absolutely horrible scenes of children being murdered.
I'm actually angry with Storygraph for recommending this book to me. It's disturbing, disgusting, and almost completely without redeeming features. What's particularly sad is that the first 40% of the book is incredibly interesting (albeit confusing) before turning into a depressing, gore-saturated pulp.
This is the most disappointing book I've read in decades. I'm so sad I read it.
This was so painful.
My spouse recommended it to me because of how much I loved “The Magicians.” There are comparisons, sure: problematic characters, modern day magic, sex... but man, The Book Of Love is easily the worst book I've read in years.
I've heard of unreliable narrators before. I'd describe this book as an “unreliable author:” it is filled with characters who lie to one another about how magic works, or what magic requires of them, so we get dozens or hundreds of pages of red herrings that have nothing to do with the overall story.
This could be acceptable if we had more than a few characters who weren't so despicable that I wanted to simply skip the chapter when their name came up. I've enjoyed books with despicable characters before, but the thing that made these characters unbearable is high school drama. (If I have to hear about who got kissed during the kissing song one more time, I swear...)
I was told that the ending would be worth it. It's not. Not at all. The author simply makes up stakes in the last hundred pages that were never alluded to or foreshadowed, and then resolves them in a few pages.
This book is like a pretentious art school dropout who's high trying to describe a dream they had a few nights ago.
I had SO MUCH FUN with the first 80% of this book. She ratchets up the tension, then keeps increasing it, and it works.
I did keep expecting her “metaphysical twist,” and she just waited too long to introduce it. It comes at the end, which is a disappointment, because it feels like a cheat. Unlike “Behind Her Eyes” which is populated with enough hints at the metaphysical “rule breaking” from the beginning of the novel, this feels like it takes place in our world right up until the end, when we get the surprise that time traveling is allowed in this world.
I'm generally a speculative fiction fan and love magical elements in stories, but there's a social contract being violated here. She gives us NO hint that metaphysical elements will be introduced until the end... and at that point, really ANY element could have been introduced to explain the events of the novel. We needed more foreshadowing, and we needed to meet the hippie earlier.
Still this was a fun read. I'm impressed by what the author is able to pull off with sustained tension. I think I'm looking forward to watching the inevitable miniseries made from this — perhaps they'll do a better job with the foreshadowing in the screen version.
Great horror for 400 pages, then weird religious pamphlet
The opening of this book is brilliant. The first 200 pages had a half dozen scenes that gave me chills. I was excited to go back to it every night.
Around 2/3rds of the way through, the horror premise is utterly abandoned and replaced with action/adventure allegory. Once the allegory starts, it gets weirder and more literal as the novel progresses.
I don't mind exploring religious ideas in literature, but this is a total Trojan horse. The anger from reading the last three chapters made me wish I hadn't read any of the first 600ish pages.
Zero research done!
This reads like a lazy YA novel. Characterization is almost non-existent, and there is very little by way of plot. It has a very annoying tactic of foreshadowing events that don't seem to be significant.
I almost gave up on this book multiple times. I wish I had. What kept me going was a hope of some scientific exploration of the phenomena described in the novel. Spoiler alert: there is none. There is almost no scientific thought present in this novel.
The novel ends when it feels like the author has gotten sick of writing it, and she comes out with the explanation that the characters never found out why the precipitating event of the novel happened. It's been a long time since a book made me angry – this one did. Don't waste your time on it.
