I had this book recommended to me by a friend, saw it discussed and highly praised here and noted the near unanimously glowing reviews on every book score metric possible, and having just finished it I have to say I have come out the other side feeling the book is decidedly "mid".
I didn't hate it or anything, it had some nice parts but I had a lot of fairly sizable problems with it. The actual imagery and broad concept were quite cool. A weird extra-dimensional "House" filled with classical statues, birds and tides, that the protagonist doesn't remember entering is a neat idea. The narration of the audiobook is also stellar. I'm not usually swayed by celebrity audiobook castings but Chiwetel Ejiofor doing the version on audible does an incredible job.
It all just felt a bit… thin by the end though. A large amount of the book is dedicated to scene-setting which ended up just being quite boring. When the plot actually gets going it ends up actually being somewhat straight forward and (at least I thought) quite predictable. The nature of The Other especially was practically written on the wall from his introduction and "name". This wasn't helped by the pacing being very slow for what is a relatively short book too. There's a lot of nothing of consequence happening.
I had real problems with the structure of it too. The diary date format combined with the attempt at rationalising some of the structure of the House by continually referring to specific rooms usually by their specific designation or location was incredibly clunky and the latter was difficult to parse.
The ending was also a massive damp squib. I was not expecting a climactic fight or massive plot twist but the way it ended just felt flacid and boring. There are a hundred different directions the initial premise could have been taken and what you're left with at the end is one of the more boring resolutions. I think I would have honestly preferred for less to be explained and more surrealist weirdness to be heaped on.
So yea, while I didn't hate it I feel like I was promised the world with this book and delivered something overall adequate.
by Skeet_fighter