Reviews and Comments

J'avais envie de lire un autre livre francais.

My book club's December book. I'm liking it so far.

Only 4 chapters from the end but the way Jo is treated and how it's presented as a good thing was just one maddening thing too much. The author is really good at painting a vivid picture of the setting and the characters but some of her views espoused in the book in an overly saccharine way are just infuriating, at least to me.

Malgré le sujet triste c'était un véritable "page turner". C'est trés attirant, la structure du livre avec des questions de la manière "si j'aurais fait quelque chose de différent". On ferait la même chose à la place d'autrice.

I liked the quirky tone of the narrator and how Sam uses her archaeology-related skills to work through the mystery (though she seems to live in a happy parallel universe where search engines still return useful results and all those special interest blogs still exist). The mystery is set up very well, in a way where at first you wouldn't be sure that it isn't just some mental breakdown by Sam's Mom. The later action scenes were a bit confusing to me and the villain(s) turned out to be very one-dimensional. Still, an enjoyable read/listen.

Ich kann das viele Lob, das dieses Buch bekommen hat, nicht so ganz nachvollziehen. Zwischendurch habe ich mich immer mal wieder gefragt, was eigentlich der Sinn dieser Geschichte sein soll. Geschichtlich ganz interessant, aber irgendwie fehlt mir was. Die Autorin versucht, dem Ganzen eine literarische Ebene mit dem Blumengemälde und dem Museumsbesuch am Ende hinzuzufügen. Das hat mir auch gefallen, aber war irgendwie zu wenig. Zumal ich Hanna und die anderen Figuren nicht besonders sympathisch fand. Vor allem die alltägliche Gewalt gegen ihre Kinder hat mir zugesetzt. Und dass keine Reflektion über die eigene Schuld stattfindet, obwohl sie und ihr Mann die ganze Zeit während des Kriegs in einem kriegswichtigen Betrieb gearbeitet haben. Überhaupt erfahren wir eigentlich wenig über Hannas inneres Leben. Meins war's nicht (obwohl ich immerhin einiges über Blumen gelernt habe und warum meine Mutter keine Erikas mag, für sie ist das eine DDR-Blume, weil es oft vor allem die gab in den Läden).

This book has a number of flaws but it does one thing well - the author is very inventive in creating a zoo of fantastic/magical animals. Those passages describing the animals, their behaviour and their enclosures are the best part of the book. She also seems to be rather knowledgable about the work behind the scenes of a zoo. If you're in any part critical of zoos, though, this book would be very frustrating. The only criticism is only presented once and is rather superficial. I appreciate the effort of the author to make the protagonist someone with anxiety but unfortunately, she comes off as rather annoying and also immature for someone her age for about half of the book. There thankfully is some character growth eventually. The pace picks up at around the halfway mark and while the mystery turns out to be somewhat predictable in the end, I enjoyed the book overall. Objectively, it only merits 3 stars but it felt more like 4, so I'll settle at 3.5.

Not sure if I'm going to stay with it. Only two chapters in, I've already been tempted to put it back several times. It's a buddy read with a friend. I hope it gets better soon, though.

I loved the setting of this book - at a fancy party in a ballroom in ever stranger worlds. The world building was very inventive with the various Echos, the more or less evil supernatural beings, the guilds and the quirky teashop. Perhaps, the author could have gone into more depth here and there. The main story is a sort of detective mystery with a dash of romance. I appreciated how the main character is a new mother and how that's handled. There are a few minor things that keep it from being 5 stars but I found it a thoroughly entertaining read.

Unfortunately, this book suffers from "second book in the trilogy" syndrome in that it is mostly set-up for the third one. It also ends in a cliffhanger. I found Lila's plot really annoying and unbelievable. I understand what the author was going for but I think that could have been achieved in a better way. The new relationship between Kell and Rhy due to events in the first book is explored only in a very shallow manner. It takes quite a while before the book gets going and then we really spend almost all of the second half on a tournament of wizards while the book hardly explores the much more interesting goings-on in White London. I did burn through the audiobook regardless but the book is a clear let-down compared to the first. But because of the cliffhanger, I'll read the third book, too.

You'd think that there isn't much room anymore in the fantasy genre for something different. But I found the world V.E. Schwab created here - 3 (or, rather 4) connected very different Londons - quite inventive. The 3 different worlds are brought to life quite vividly. What I really appreciated is how the author thought about how the existence, the potential disappearance and the absence of magic would influence a society. That seems like an often neglected aspect. The story is a good mix of mystery, intrigue and action, if a bit oddly paced at times. And to me, it was quite a page turner. This is the first part of a trilogy but the story is self-contained.