ornithopter1's review against another edition
1.0
The.. most.. exhausting.. book. The novel presents a small number of archetypes (the word 'characters' wouldn't be appropriate) who repeat somewhat analogous actions in different incarnations: for example, a Sumerian goddess might create a statue to act as her idol in an ancient temple and a modern-day biker chick might create an A.I. within cyberspace to act as her avatar. Each little vignette may give you a sliver of information you didn't have before, summing (supposedly) to a composite tale. However, sometimes the pieces contradict, sometimes characters merge, or become different characters entirely to who you thought they were. It was a mess. Just when you think you've built a picture of what's going on, the story moves on, the tide comes in and washes it all away. I kept hoping the story fragments would coalesce into something comprehensible but it never quite happened.
The writing is very fine, Hal Duncan has a stylish cast to his sentences. The imagery is particularly vivid in the sole linear subplot - that of a lone man trekking through eternity in search of an answer - those linear sections had the effect of reviving me between the arduous incoherence of the rest of the book. Its sad to think, given how I liked the language, that I really tried to persevere and actively WANTED to like this book, yet it wouldn't let me. Sadly the relentless, exhausting, frustrating, obfuscatory fracturing of both plot and character leaves you completely hollow. I reached the point, where I felt daunted every time I thought about picking the book up again. In the end I simply gave up at the halfway mark!
I doubt I'll ever return to this one to finish the job. Despite the fine language its a truly awful novel.
The writing is very fine, Hal Duncan has a stylish cast to his sentences. The imagery is particularly vivid in the sole linear subplot - that of a lone man trekking through eternity in search of an answer - those linear sections had the effect of reviving me between the arduous incoherence of the rest of the book. Its sad to think, given how I liked the language, that I really tried to persevere and actively WANTED to like this book, yet it wouldn't let me. Sadly the relentless, exhausting, frustrating, obfuscatory fracturing of both plot and character leaves you completely hollow. I reached the point, where I felt daunted every time I thought about picking the book up again. In the end I simply gave up at the halfway mark!
I doubt I'll ever return to this one to finish the job. Despite the fine language its a truly awful novel.
senqin's review
3.0
★★★
One of those books where you somehow both love and hate it at the same time. I liked the concepts, the experimental structure of the narrative, and the sheer scope of the story that was being told. There were also some truly brilliant moments in Vellum especially in the first half. However, the author has this tendency to...ramble? It's clear that he is incredibly skilled with language and wordplay in particular, but for the life of me I just could not keep my eyes from glazing over by the middle of every single chapter. I am still super interested in Hal Duncan's short story collections though because he really is an incredible writer with some truly unique ideas.
One of those books where you somehow both love and hate it at the same time. I liked the concepts, the experimental structure of the narrative, and the sheer scope of the story that was being told. There were also some truly brilliant moments in Vellum especially in the first half. However, the author has this tendency to...ramble? It's clear that he is incredibly skilled with language and wordplay in particular, but for the life of me I just could not keep my eyes from glazing over by the middle of every single chapter. I am still super interested in Hal Duncan's short story collections though because he really is an incredible writer with some truly unique ideas.
jsimpson's review
3.0
I don't have too much to add from what the reviewers have already said on this. I read this a few months ago, and did thoroughly enjoy and appreciate it, especially seeing as how it was Hal Duncan's first novel. I think, however, that he was a bit ambitious in scope, bit off more than he could chew. There's like 5 plots going on, winding through a myriad of alternate universes, which makes for a rather disorienting read. It was hard work at time, but i stuck through, mainly because i am obsessed with the topics Duncan was writing about. Angels, Qaballah, the nature of reality, ancient Babylon (kind of a neat take on the Ishtar myth, in there), archetypes, mixed in with some futuristic Sci-Fi stuff. An ambitious project, and he succeeded rather admirably. I also found out about some other really cool Fabulist writers via Hal Duncan, namely Jeff VanDermeer and Italo Calvino, both of whom i would recommend and i will review more later, as the time becomes available. I recommend this read for fans of weirdo speculative fiction/fantasy/horror, for fans of ambitious experimental art and would rather see someone take risks than to play it safe.
hornantuutti's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
zeezeemama11's review
2.0
First off, yes i struggled through this book and yes i finished it. When i test out authors i usually suffer threw a few of their books before i make a decision - this one i'm good after one. Too much time jumping. The characters are intriguing and barable. But you never get into the book cause almost every other paragraph your taken to some other point in time. Wonderful idea but very badly done. Choppy at best, I would not recommend this book to anyone with out a bottle of advil to go alone with it. To fully understand everything in this book at best you would have to read it two times, and once was too much for me. The only reason i rated this book at all is because i liked his orginal ideas concerning his character.
meliemelo's review
5.0
(2018 re-read)
I've been wanting to immerse myself back into Hal Duncan's world for a while, if only to be able to finally get into the second book. I found exactly what I'd loved in the first place: a convoluted universe, only matched by the complexity of the writing. It's not an easy read, far, far from it, but sometimes one needs difficult books. I think I got even more out of it than on the first round, and it should stick with me for a bit longer.
I've been wanting to immerse myself back into Hal Duncan's world for a while, if only to be able to finally get into the second book. I found exactly what I'd loved in the first place: a convoluted universe, only matched by the complexity of the writing. It's not an easy read, far, far from it, but sometimes one needs difficult books. I think I got even more out of it than on the first round, and it should stick with me for a bit longer.
chelsea_not_chels's review
4.0
More reviews available at my blog, Beauty and the Bookworm.
For a very long time, I thought I would never finish this book. I've had it for close to a decade, I'd say, and never got much more than halfway through it. It's a strange book, which is the main reason why, and looking at reviews I can see that a lot of other people have had a lot of frustration with it, too. But I picked it back up recently to fulfill the Popsugar Reading Challenge category of "A book you started but never finished." This certainly fulfilled that category for me, but it meant I had to finish Vellum this time around if it was going to count. And I did. And I liked it.
I think this is a book I really needed to come back to with a fresh pair of eyes. Here's the thing: the book doesn't actually really make much sense. There are a lot of timelines and a lot of characters, many of whom have the same names, but who don't always resemble each other a lot. There are a lot of worlds and a lot of weird things in those worlds. It all has to be looked at through the right lens in order to make sense, and I think I finally found that lens. I call it the Cloud Atlas lens. For those of you that haven't read Cloud Atlas, it's a bunch of different narrative styles that are patched together, one half of each and then the other halves in reverse order, that follow people who, as you eventually realize, are all the same people, throughout different lives in different times. Vellum is like that, on a bigger scale. Not only are these people the same people, through different times, but they're also different versions of the same people, in different worlds that are each a step different from our own, until they're getting weirder and weirder and farther and farther apart from our own reality. All of these worlds are arrayed on a sort of meta-world called the Vellum, and characters escape to and travel across the Vellum for various reasons, looking for various things. And these people can be changed by re-writing the coding of their own souls. Phreedom/Anna/Imana is looking for her brother, Thomas. Finnan is tied up in them because he made them unkin, immortal, able to do things like travel through the Vellum. And then there's Metatron, one of the highest unkin, an "angel," who helps to lead the Covenant, which is sort of a banding together of unkin who want a certain type of order, against another bunch of unkin who want a different sort of order. Metatron thinks Finnan and Thomas and Phreedom have something he wants, and so he and his lackeys are hunting them down--all while the end of the world swirls around them.
The farther into the book, the more things begin to come together, but I admit that it does take a long time for that to happen--and some things never come together as much as the others. The prologue, for example, never really actually ties in with the rest. Its events and narrator pop up throughout the "Errata" sections now and then, but they never link up with the Phreedom/Thomas/Finnan/Metatron story, which is really the main story. Some story- and timelines are also more compelling than others. I found the World War I story, for example, utterly boring, even though I get that it was important for Finnan's origins. The part I probably found the most interesting was the bits about the archaeological expedition to find Kur and the source of the Cant, which is a sort of language that can change reality. There are also some really weird stylistic choices with this book, and I have no idea what book stylist in his (or her) right mind agreed to set up a book with all of those stupid line breaks. They're completely unnecessary and come across as someone trying to be more "arty" than the book actually calls for. The different fonts I understood--they help distinguish the different lines when the sections sometimes appear intertwined with each other. But the line breaks? Completely stupid. They appear what seems to be randomly, probably to make things seem more dramatic than they actually are.
I really enjoyed this. I can see, however, why many people didn't, and also why I didn't in the past. I think you really have to like stories about different versions of the same souls, different iterations of the same people, in order to like this, and you have to be willing to soldier on through a lot of weirdness in order to get to the parts that make sense. I was willing to do that this time, and I think it paid off. I'll definitely be reading the second part, Ink. But this is definitely a love it or hate it type of book, and it's not for everyone.
For a very long time, I thought I would never finish this book. I've had it for close to a decade, I'd say, and never got much more than halfway through it. It's a strange book, which is the main reason why, and looking at reviews I can see that a lot of other people have had a lot of frustration with it, too. But I picked it back up recently to fulfill the Popsugar Reading Challenge category of "A book you started but never finished." This certainly fulfilled that category for me, but it meant I had to finish Vellum this time around if it was going to count. And I did. And I liked it.
I think this is a book I really needed to come back to with a fresh pair of eyes. Here's the thing: the book doesn't actually really make much sense. There are a lot of timelines and a lot of characters, many of whom have the same names, but who don't always resemble each other a lot. There are a lot of worlds and a lot of weird things in those worlds. It all has to be looked at through the right lens in order to make sense, and I think I finally found that lens. I call it the Cloud Atlas lens. For those of you that haven't read Cloud Atlas, it's a bunch of different narrative styles that are patched together, one half of each and then the other halves in reverse order, that follow people who, as you eventually realize, are all the same people, throughout different lives in different times. Vellum is like that, on a bigger scale. Not only are these people the same people, through different times, but they're also different versions of the same people, in different worlds that are each a step different from our own, until they're getting weirder and weirder and farther and farther apart from our own reality. All of these worlds are arrayed on a sort of meta-world called the Vellum, and characters escape to and travel across the Vellum for various reasons, looking for various things. And these people can be changed by re-writing the coding of their own souls. Phreedom/Anna/Imana is looking for her brother, Thomas. Finnan is tied up in them because he made them unkin, immortal, able to do things like travel through the Vellum. And then there's Metatron, one of the highest unkin, an "angel," who helps to lead the Covenant, which is sort of a banding together of unkin who want a certain type of order, against another bunch of unkin who want a different sort of order. Metatron thinks Finnan and Thomas and Phreedom have something he wants, and so he and his lackeys are hunting them down--all while the end of the world swirls around them.
The farther into the book, the more things begin to come together, but I admit that it does take a long time for that to happen--and some things never come together as much as the others. The prologue, for example, never really actually ties in with the rest. Its events and narrator pop up throughout the "Errata" sections now and then, but they never link up with the Phreedom/Thomas/Finnan/Metatron story, which is really the main story. Some story- and timelines are also more compelling than others. I found the World War I story, for example, utterly boring, even though I get that it was important for Finnan's origins. The part I probably found the most interesting was the bits about the archaeological expedition to find Kur and the source of the Cant, which is a sort of language that can change reality. There are also some really weird stylistic choices with this book, and I have no idea what book stylist in his (or her) right mind agreed to set up a book with all of those stupid line breaks. They're completely unnecessary and come across as someone trying to be more "arty" than the book actually calls for. The different fonts I understood--they help distinguish the different lines when the sections sometimes appear intertwined with each other. But the line breaks? Completely stupid. They appear what seems to be randomly, probably to make things seem more dramatic than they actually are.
I really enjoyed this. I can see, however, why many people didn't, and also why I didn't in the past. I think you really have to like stories about different versions of the same souls, different iterations of the same people, in order to like this, and you have to be willing to soldier on through a lot of weirdness in order to get to the parts that make sense. I was willing to do that this time, and I think it paid off. I'll definitely be reading the second part, Ink. But this is definitely a love it or hate it type of book, and it's not for everyone.