jester that flakes from groups more than neil young

plot and dialogue can sometimes be hard to follow. jumps around a lot on its timeline which can make it take a while to reorient yourself, but the jumps do effectively make multiple fictional lives feel full. you really do develop an attachment to the characters -- not too much though for myself personally as i feel the more literal war plot took the wheel a bit too much and tyll got left in the boot sometimes (i'm sure tyll would love being in a boot, but i think a bit too much for too long).

i found the opening hundred(ish) pages to be extremely immersive and beautifully handled, but i feel my investment slightly lost itself during timeline jumps because it sometimes felt too far away from Tyll as the focal character; though i understand why Tyll was left in the mid-ground/background for large segments of the book for the sake of the plot, i feel like the book lost the purpose of its namesake the further towards the end of the book it got.

i will, however, say that kehlmann has an absolutely stunning ability to describe death -- specifically the decline into death, the physical/mental corrosion, the confusion and abstraction of oneself, one's environment, and one's understanding of time, their own life, and the people around them. i found myself reading faster and more intensely when combatting the death of the Winter King and the mineshaft deaths, and overall i adore kehlmann's (and benjamin's) literary style and the clarity, humour, and attentiveness given to dialogue. he is extremely good at making dialogue or descriptions seem half-assed in the best way. the opening scenes of the witch/warlock trial and the build-up to it were phenominally done in terms of historical value, dialogue, and the clusterfuck of emotions behind it all.

overall, a fabulous and thoroughly enjoyable book. sometimes a bit hard to get through if you're not used to medieval politics, but there are many scenes that just make grateful for being able to read.