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Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Frankenstein in Baghdad in Books

Jul 23, 2019

This book won at least two awards; the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and France's Grand Prize for Fantasy, and the author had previously been named one of the 39 best Arab authors under the age of 39. I picked it up to read for the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge, since the Middle East is all-too-often neglected in regional groupings like that. People don't think of it as Europe or Asia. I also try to read translated books on occasion, in an effort to diversify my reading. So this hit a number of my interests - I wish I had actually liked the book more!

It's an interesting retelling of Frankenstein - which I haven't actually read, and now feel like I really should. But it bounces around between several viewpoints. It's not too many to keep straight, but it's definitely too many to truly care about. And it suffers from an unreliable narrator - it's written as several stories told to an author from multiple people that he's woven together into a single narrative, and while he does that well, it suffers from contradictions between how different characters recall things, scenes that don't play a part in furthering the plot but the characters thought they were important, and no authoritative "this is what REALLY happened" to draw it all together.

And I very much dislike unreliable narrators, so that alone is enough to make me dislike the book. If you like ambiguous narratives and vigilante stories, however, you might enjoy this, and the writing style itself was quite engrossing.

You can find all my reviews and more at http://goddessinthestacks.com

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Phil Leader (619 KP) rated The Last Child of Leif in Books

Nov 18, 2019

The Last Child of Leif

Chris Pridmore | 2016 | Science Fiction/Fantasy

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Did you hear about the child who ran away to join the circus? How about if that child was a crown prince called Valiant who escapes the murder of his father, barely escaping with his mother and faithful swordsman Sebastian?

That's an extremely simplistic rendering of the start of this book, but one that is quite illustrative of the way that the whole story unfolds. What starts as something very simple evolves into something a whole lot more complicated.

Valiant does indeed end up hiding in a travelling circus as its traction engines slowly pull it across an alternate 19th Century Eastern Europe. But this is no ordinary circus and among it's various performers and other attractions much skill and knowledge is hidden. As the journey continues it becomes clear that forces want Valiant dead and really will stop at nothing to achieve this.

With a story this complex and with the very big cast of characters it would be easy for the reader to get confused, but Pridmore is very careful to introduce everything and everybody gradually, giving each time and space so the reader becomes familiar. The characterisation is outstanding, everybody in the circus is very much their own person and very well realised and each character develops throughout the book, sometimes with some surprising revelations.

The plot itself is really good, building at each turn, becoming gradually more complex and more expansive as each chapter passes. The threats appear credible and the efforts to repel them are completely in line with how the characters have been developed up to that point.

Overall this is an utterly compelling read that has been very well written