Sarah

I decided to read this after seeing the New York Times rated it as the best book of the century. I've been in much more of a genre fiction mood lately so maybe I was not able to assess this fairly, but wow did it feel tedious after the first hundred pages or so, I ended up skimming a lot. At first I was really enjoying the direct and intense writing style, but it got almost jarring to me without enough plot or character growth to go with it. I don't know, I sort of feel like I was missing something or just wasn't in the right head space. It might also be that, while I can enjoy the books where children are the main characters, I don't really like books that are all about the experience of adolescence.

I thought the setup in this book was extremely well done, but found myself a little less interested when (spoiler alert) they start getting eaten by dinosaurs. Overall it is a great thriller with enough substance to be interesting.

It's spoooky season, and this book really delivered on the creepy gothic atmosphere. It also contains the perfect incarnation of the snarky narrator.

Really answers a lot of questions from the series and also tells a lovely story on its own. It was nice to revisit the characters, maybe I'll watch the show again soon.

I really felt like I should like this book, but it just didn't quite work for me. I made it more than halfway through before I admitted that I really didn't care about the outcome. There is a war between the gods, but it was unclear to me what the stakes were and neither side seemed worth rooting for.