meliemelo's review
3.0
It's hard to tell when exactly "ambitious" turned to "possibly pretentious", when I went from "this is Complicated but Complicated is Nice" to "mmmmmh yeah maybe that could have been shortened a bit because I'm not even really enjoying myself at that point".
There's still a lot of brilliance in this book, some amazing ideas, and the convoluted writing is nice... until it gets too convoluted. I really wanted to love it, to devour it from beginning to end... but even said end didn't fully satisfy me, and I nearly wish I hadn't gone through my big re-read of the first one to get to this one, so that I'd stayed on my first impressions.
I don't know. I guess it just lost its magic for me.
There's still a lot of brilliance in this book, some amazing ideas, and the convoluted writing is nice... until it gets too convoluted. I really wanted to love it, to devour it from beginning to end... but even said end didn't fully satisfy me, and I nearly wish I hadn't gone through my big re-read of the first one to get to this one, so that I'd stayed on my first impressions.
I don't know. I guess it just lost its magic for me.
nomiddlename's review
4.0
This book was great, but I really have no idea what was going on. At all. Utterly confused for the first half of it, but engrossed. Second half, slightly less confused, but still enjoying it. It may have made more sense if I was familiar with some of the literary references. Or it may not.
rdebner's review
4.0
A nice conclusion to the story begun in [book:Vellum]. Duncan tones down the incessant switching between narratives and characters, which makes book 2 of the Book of All Hours a more legible counterpart and more focused. The pleasure of reading his smartly researched prose did not diminish the slightest from having fewer narrative strands and mythologies to follow. I will be interested to see what he comes out with next.
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