graylodge_library's reviews
1465 reviews

I really wanted to like this book and find a touching story about friendship and loss. It proved to be yet another shallow bestseller of bad writing. It serves good as shedding a bit of light to the culture but only very little. Good intentions don't carry far if you fail to build a consistent plot with interesting and three-dimensional characters.

What irritated me most were the ridiculously convenient revelations and situations. At one point Amir was warned using cliches or something like that and that made me laugh. Because that's exactly what the author had done. And I hate books where the reader is not allowed to interpret the metaphors etc but instead the author has to explain them like we were five-year-old kids!

The descriptions and history sections went ok but I just couldn't get into the plot. Smith is good at drawing you to historical events but he's kind of lost in writing a novel. Very predictable and annoyingly simple characters.

The Cripple In Love: Or Sakris Kukkelman, A Poor Bolshevik
Sakris Kukkelman is a hunchbacked construction worker who lives in a little cottage in the outskirts of Helsinki and dreams of having a loved one. One extra star for a good beginning and a good end. Otherwise it was exactly what I was afraid of, typical complaining of a Finnish working class.

Again one of those gems in my grandmother's shelf. I kind of disliked Karlsson when I was a child but at the same time he was a hilarious character and I always looked forward to him appearing through the window. The book made me look up on our roof just in case if we had a chubby little man living in there.

Shows pretty nicely what the medieval world thought about the dead and how much they actually thought them to be part of their lives.

Started off good. For a while I was sucked into Africa but then it kind of betrayed its promises. The characters are incredibly unbelievable and the things they do are just plain ridiculous. Before the middle I couldn't care less about the story anymore. The two stars are completely dedicated to the occasionally beautiful prose.

I'm not a hundred percent sure about her writing style or about the cleverness of the plot but I didn't want to put it out of my hands either. "A bit too long" was the first thought that came into my head. Despite the flaws I enjoyed reading it and if I could I would give it 3½ stars because I do think it was slightly above average.

The Green Chamber of the Linnainen Mansion
First I thought I could give it three stars but... No, it wasn't that great. Not utterly hideous but really boring if not counting the ghost scene.