The book is highly influential and I was looking forward to reading it. Sadly, it may be the biggest disappointment I have experienced in terms of books.
I started out loving it, despite its lack of any sort of linear plot. I felt that the authors succinctly and masterfully created an immersive experience with their writing. I also just liked the style of it and how well-written some scenes and characters were, such as >! the scene where Noonan is drinking with Red and Red’s father and Monkey comes into the room and rests her head on Red’s father’s shoulder !<.
Clearly, the authors don’t spoon feed. In fact, a lot of the things that would normally be considered basic and fundamental, usually just handed to you in a direct manner in other books, is actually something you need to work for with this book. You’re basically reading a long series of hints. The story is hinted to you. I found this exhausting and wished to just learn something the good old fashioned way of being told it and give my brain a break from time to time, but no. You want to understand what’s happening in this scene? Analyse the mentioned sweat on one guy’s brow, the mentioned expressions of two others guys and the sequence of small events leading the character to enter the room they’re in and you’ll have an idea. Then take a break and replenish your energy before coming back because understanding what they’ll be talking about next is gonna be tough. Sometimes they mention things knowing that the reader has no way of knowing what they’re talking about yet and they can only put all the pieces together in like 15 pages, but I wouldn’t know that, would I? I’d think I missed something and keep wracking my brain, rereading sentences and trying to make sense of everything.
As soon as I started the final chapter, I started to resent the book and I was just forcing myself through the pages and not taking anything in by that point. The level of detail that went into describing the environment and the map was just exhausting and there was nothing fun about it. It was so hard forcing myself through it. I kept trying to calculate how much time I had left before I could finally put the book down once and for all. I don’t know what the environment looked like. It was just too much effort putting together every square inch of every area of that place in my head based off of the unnecessarily detailed descriptions in the book. Detailed yet vague at the same time. Again, hints, but this time much more of them. Gimme a break and just tell me what something looks like. They’d mention how “now” they are neckdeep in the water without me even knowing there was water in the first place. Must have missed a hint then. The area was so detailed that my brain could not retain all the detailed it picked up on from the hinted descriptions.
Are there actual, profound philosophies hinted at and hidden underneath mountains of hints about frivolous things? What did the last sentences mean? What were they hinting at? Is the book a big hint that people adore that which they do not understand? Is it about taking a hint that you should be reading something else?
by Loriol_13