peripetia's reviews
535 reviews

This was fine.

Memoirs are hard - what do you choose to tell, how good is your memory, in what light do you reflect yourself... These are some of the questions always attached to memoirs, questions that everyone should keep in mind.

This applies also to this book. It's hard to know the objective truth, which doesn't exist, especially coming from a PR pro.

Despite these questions, I think this was a good book, and offers information that is crucial for the general public to understand.

This was a bit of a soft thriller that kept me in its grip pretty well. At the surface level it's kind of pointless, but if you look at the underlying themes and message, it works really well.

There's nothing wrong with this book, I just can't get into it. I think audio format was the wrong choice for me.

I'm writing a dnf review just for my own records so I don't start reading a book I already dnf'd once (I dnf a lot of books that sound interesting).

This book started super promising. I loved the over-analyzing of small details and philosophical meandering. Unfortunately, that's all the book was. Stream of consciousness that sometimes made valid points but often not. Reality and fantasy were mixed in a very boring way. Extra shock value was derived out of - you guessed it - bodily fluids.

Where is the horror? Where is the time-travel? Where is the feminist manifesto?

Such a disappointment. 

I liked this book but I also have some criticism/complaints that lowered my rating.

Pros:
- The setting is interesting.
- The magic system is interesting.
- I liked the focus on the relationship between Ahilya and Iravan.
- Nice to sometimes have adult characters instead of teenagers and twenty-somethings.
- The world is not perfect (some have complained about the hierarchical society, but I don't think all fantasy needs to be an escapist utopia).
- The writing is (for the most part) good, worked very well for me.

Cons:
- The book is described as being perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin, and sometimes this did seem too similar to the Broken Earth trilogy.
- I didn't get the magic in practice. I wasn't able to visualize it. I have read fantasy for a couple decades now so I don't believe it's me not being somehow incapable of understanding magic systems.
- The pacing was off. Several passages should have been cut, maybe entire chapters.
- The history of the world and the current situation is revealed very conveniently.
- The magic/tech system didn't fully make sense to me.
- TOO MANY DASHES. I know you're trying to write a realistic conversation where people interrupt each other, but this is too much. See an example below, contains a minor spoiler.

Ahilya,” he began, his voice hoarse. “Please,
listen—”
“It was you. You sent her
away—”
“I only wanted to spend some time
with—”
“You threatened my
expedition—”
“No,” he said quickly. “That wasn’t
my—”
“You were supposed to be at the
watchpost—”
“Yes,
but—”

So in conclusion, I don't think it was bad but it didn't manage to keep me entertained, which is basically the main function of fantasy. I honestly don't think I will continue with this series. Maybe. We will see.

This book is built on features that I generally speaking avoid - coming of age, no plot, disconnected scenes, no progress or resolution. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

This was written beautifully and skillfully. The scenes were not actually disconnected pieces of random text, and even without a clear resolution, it left me with a feeling of completeness. I kind of disagree with the coming of age aspect as the narrator is reflecting on her past as an adult.

I read this in maybe two or three days and loved every page. For me, the best aspect was the humor, which really worked with my sense of humor.

This was a fantastic book. It's rarely this easy to give a book a full 5 stars.

This book is one person's story, and yet it is not. The elements of it are common and familiar. The story is so well-written and the narrator's character really shines.

I can't recommend this book enough, not just for feminists and women, but everyone. This story will touch anyone that reads it - for good or for bad.

2,5 rounded up to 3.

This book was a waste of my time. I wish I had spent this time on something else.

This was sold to me as a psychological thriller, but there is no thriller, or at best it's underwhelming. The build-up to the final conflict is 300 pages out of the 330, and the conflict in the end is kind of... nothing.

The topic of a strained and estranged mother/daughter relationship was what finally did it for me and made me pick up this book.

The other 300 pages were her "introspection", very literally - she is obsessed with her inner thoughts and her feelings. I got nothing about the other characters, such as her mother. They remain as thin as they are in the daughter's memories and thoughts.

This is a novel and the character writte kind of like an unreliable narrator, but the hints at the true nature of things are few and far between. 99% of the book is focused on the narrator being special and nobody understands her and she is so mistreated and the things she are correct and warranted.

Just boring and pointless.

Side note: why do audiobook narrators make zero effort to pronounce names and words in the original language? ZERO. 

Disclosure: I am Finnish and I read it Finnish, which (of course) is the basis of my review.

I thought this book was pretty much pure genius. You could call it pretentious, but I would say it's more flexing, considering how Sinisalo incorporated such a diverse array of old (re-worked) texts.

I could not stop thinking about how this was translated into other languages because it's so highly contextual. To be quite honest, it's impossible for a non- Finnish reader to fully get this book as delves deep into Finnish culture, history, language, literature, and society. That might affect the reader's experience. 

It's not just the language and textual and cultural references that made it great. I was not expecting such depth from a fantasy book.

Since I was obsessed with the translation, I actually requested the English translation from the library to compare the original and translation. I have not done that yet and I will not be reviewing the book based on the translation.