Oh this was just such an absolute delight to read!

To put it simply, everything in this book is fantastic! The world is vast and interesting and we learn more about it, but not very fast so there are no real lore dump moments. The characters are entertaining and behave in a way so very human that it makes them very easy to empathise with. The pacing of the book is great, it never becomes dull but also needs no cliffhangers or other such things to grab your attention. Etcetera, etcetera…

Though what I would like to bring up for a short moment is the narrator. This book contains a character who tells us this story and refers to himself as I. But he, is not the main character. What I find most incredible about this is that it works. Because I would not be very interested in a book that would contain this, since I doubt it would work well. But it works wonderfully well in this case. When he puts in little anecdotes or goes on a small tangent about something it doesn’t take away from the story. Really, just good stuff.

Genuinely one of the worst stories to ever be verbally vomited unto paper.

The number of times I had to reread parts because what is written is almost incomprehensible. It was often the case I felt as if a comma was missing, a part of the sentence was missing, that is it unclear who exactly is saying or what is written is a thought or something a character is saying.

Speaking of the characters, they are all deranged. None of these people are even remotely normal human beings. This is especially the case because the book makes it clear it really does take place in the year 2023. That was not long ago, we remember how people speak from that time. One character especially is just psychotic; Marianne would be called an unrealistic(ally evil) character even in the most convoluted fantasy novel.

Even with all this weird and revolting nonsense it still manages to be dull and boring. Also, what is up with the formatting of the book? Why do we sometimes need a blank page? I guess it is because the chapter just ended in a really weird and awkward way and the writer wants a blank page to let that sink in, maybe take a breath and walk around so you can scream with anguish because you are too stubborn to not finish this pathetic excuse of a book.

I mean this, it is just awful. I really do hope Sophie Hannah has written books that aren’t all like this, because that would just be sad.