Reviews - P.D. James, Lev Grossman
The Children of Men (P.D. James)
This hovers between three and four stars for me, but ultimately gets three because it felt dry. I liked some of the imagery, and I liked the ideas, but the writing failed to have urgency for me. The lead-in was long, but that didn't make it tense for me.
I'm not saying it's not interesting to read, though. I polished it off in a day, in exactly the same way as An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. It just never caught fire in my head, never really became a compulsion to keep on reading. The characters never felt alive to me, even with all the detail about them.
Codex (Lev Grossman)
I was all set to give this book a higher rating, really. The writing is not uncompelling -- I wouldn't say it's slick and fascinating prose, but it's not a turn-off, either. It's okay for lazy reading, and the descriptions are pretty good. Some parts are quite fascinating, particularly the descriptions of MOMUS.
Characterisation is shaky, though. I don't particularly care about any of the characters, or feel convinced by their relationships to each other. Edward, the main character, was blandly unobjectionable, really, and Margaret was no better. The Duchess could've been interesting, but there wasn't much of her. I didn't believe in any of Edward's motivations, either: it didn't make any sense.
And then the ending... nothing has changed since the first page of the book, really. Edward hasn't grown as a character at all. The status quo hasn't shifted so much as an inch. All the potentially interesting characters and plot exits stage left. It's an utter anticlimax. It's infuriating.
Stuff here is posted first to Dreamwidth. I won't disable comments here, but I prefer to receive comments on DW. Go here to do so. If you need a DW invite, ask. There is a tutorial on how to set up your OpenID here. If you comment anonymously, please sign your comments!
This hovers between three and four stars for me, but ultimately gets three because it felt dry. I liked some of the imagery, and I liked the ideas, but the writing failed to have urgency for me. The lead-in was long, but that didn't make it tense for me.
I'm not saying it's not interesting to read, though. I polished it off in a day, in exactly the same way as An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. It just never caught fire in my head, never really became a compulsion to keep on reading. The characters never felt alive to me, even with all the detail about them.
Codex (Lev Grossman)
I was all set to give this book a higher rating, really. The writing is not uncompelling -- I wouldn't say it's slick and fascinating prose, but it's not a turn-off, either. It's okay for lazy reading, and the descriptions are pretty good. Some parts are quite fascinating, particularly the descriptions of MOMUS.
Characterisation is shaky, though. I don't particularly care about any of the characters, or feel convinced by their relationships to each other. Edward, the main character, was blandly unobjectionable, really, and Margaret was no better. The Duchess could've been interesting, but there wasn't much of her. I didn't believe in any of Edward's motivations, either: it didn't make any sense.
And then the ending... nothing has changed since the first page of the book, really. Edward hasn't grown as a character at all. The status quo hasn't shifted so much as an inch. All the potentially interesting characters and plot exits stage left. It's an utter anticlimax. It's infuriating.
Stuff here is posted first to Dreamwidth. I won't disable comments here, but I prefer to receive comments on DW. Go here to do so. If you need a DW invite, ask. There is a tutorial on how to set up your OpenID here. If you comment anonymously, please sign your comments!