pdestrienne's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
4.0
Narration was great. I was a little annoyed that the illustrations weren't described because I couldn't download the pdf that was supposed to come with the eAudiobook. M.T. Anderson is always a delight for me.
jkoncurat's review against another edition
2.0
Synopsis (no spoilers): The elves and goblins have been at war for years. As a show a peace, elf historian Brangwain Spurge is sent on a diplomatic mission into goblin territory. Only it's not really a diplomatic mission, as Spurge is actually there as a spy for the elf kingdom. With his goblin host, Werfel, Spurge navigates goblin territory, as well as the precarious politics between their two people.
Review: The best thing about The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is that it's a quick read. About a third of the story is told through illustrations instead of text. Despite its length though, this book moves extremely slow. Brangwain Spurge is a terrible and generally unlikable protagonist. Werfel, while being relatively kinder, is also unlikable. The book also suffers from a general lack of female characters, with all the key players (except for Werfel's pet squid-thing) being male. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is set up as a political metaphor, but is so caught up in the metaphor it forgets to be an actually good book. It's not the worst thing I've read, but it's far from the best.
Content Warnings:
Prejudice
Allegorical racism
Violence
Review: The best thing about The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is that it's a quick read. About a third of the story is told through illustrations instead of text. Despite its length though, this book moves extremely slow. Brangwain Spurge is a terrible and generally unlikable protagonist. Werfel, while being relatively kinder, is also unlikable. The book also suffers from a general lack of female characters, with all the key players (except for Werfel's pet squid-thing) being male. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is set up as a political metaphor, but is so caught up in the metaphor it forgets to be an actually good book. It's not the worst thing I've read, but it's far from the best.
Content Warnings:
Prejudice
Allegorical racism
Violence
amiefw's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
agn946's review against another edition
4.0
*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
This book hit the ground running, just tossing the reader into the middle of this incredibly odd and interesting world. There are three ways that this story is told. The first is through illustrations (that are Brangwain’s messages he is sending back), letters from the leader of the spy organization to the elf king, and finally through the narration of Werfel, the goblin archivist hosting Brangwain. I really think that all three have their own merits and do a nice job of mixing things up telling the story. I was not a huge fan of the illustrations as a story telling technique but a reveal towards the end of the novel made me reconsider and really enjoy them. By far my favorite were the letters to the king from the spy chief, because I think that these letters not only push the plot forward, but also really showcase the best of the humor that is displayed throughout the book.
Werfel’s narration is far and away the primary way the story is told, and as a result, I really sympathized with his interpretation of things. One one of the first points that the book tries to drive home right from the get go is the idea that everything, especially history, is about perspective. As Werfel and his elfin guest discuss various accounts of the history they both studied, they often get into disagreements about who was truly at fault and the root causes of things like past wars between the two races. I really appreciated that this book somewhat subverted the normal fantasy trope by having the reader see more of the perspective of the goblins. I think situating it this way really helped make me think more critically about the situations as they arose, and it was just a nice change of pace.
As I mentioned above, the book does not hold back just tossing the reader into the world. I both appreciate this and think it is one of my few criticisms. On the one hand, I think that it is incredible how much world building they were able to do in so few pages (although I would have liked more, that is always the case for me, even for incredibly long books/series), however, it was also a bit jarring to the point that the first several chapters probably took me as long to get through as the rest of the book, because it was a ton of information to take in, and at times did not seem entirely organic.
Finally, since it has been a complaint of mine as late I think I should also praise this book for doing a wonderful job of leaving breadcrumbs of foreshadowing about future parts of the plot throughout the whole story. It was nice to be able to figure things out slightly before characters did both in terms of major plot points and also smaller jokes that were being set up far in advance. This made for a really enjoyable reading experience that allowed for me to burn through the final two thirds of the book incredibly quickly since I wanted to see if my predictions were correct or not.
I think this is an awesome middle grade or struggling reader book, however, if a person is not into fantasy I think it would be a hard sell. It makes some wonderful points everyone can relate to, but as mentioned above there is a lot of really heavy weirdness and world building that would be hard to get someone who is not into fantasy to buy into.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
This book hit the ground running, just tossing the reader into the middle of this incredibly odd and interesting world. There are three ways that this story is told. The first is through illustrations (that are Brangwain’s messages he is sending back), letters from the leader of the spy organization to the elf king, and finally through the narration of Werfel, the goblin archivist hosting Brangwain. I really think that all three have their own merits and do a nice job of mixing things up telling the story. I was not a huge fan of the illustrations as a story telling technique but a reveal towards the end of the novel made me reconsider and really enjoy them. By far my favorite were the letters to the king from the spy chief, because I think that these letters not only push the plot forward, but also really showcase the best of the humor that is displayed throughout the book.
Werfel’s narration is far and away the primary way the story is told, and as a result, I really sympathized with his interpretation of things. One one of the first points that the book tries to drive home right from the get go is the idea that everything, especially history, is about perspective. As Werfel and his elfin guest discuss various accounts of the history they both studied, they often get into disagreements about who was truly at fault and the root causes of things like past wars between the two races. I really appreciated that this book somewhat subverted the normal fantasy trope by having the reader see more of the perspective of the goblins. I think situating it this way really helped make me think more critically about the situations as they arose, and it was just a nice change of pace.
As I mentioned above, the book does not hold back just tossing the reader into the world. I both appreciate this and think it is one of my few criticisms. On the one hand, I think that it is incredible how much world building they were able to do in so few pages (although I would have liked more, that is always the case for me, even for incredibly long books/series), however, it was also a bit jarring to the point that the first several chapters probably took me as long to get through as the rest of the book, because it was a ton of information to take in, and at times did not seem entirely organic.
Finally, since it has been a complaint of mine as late I think I should also praise this book for doing a wonderful job of leaving breadcrumbs of foreshadowing about future parts of the plot throughout the whole story. It was nice to be able to figure things out slightly before characters did both in terms of major plot points and also smaller jokes that were being set up far in advance. This made for a really enjoyable reading experience that allowed for me to burn through the final two thirds of the book incredibly quickly since I wanted to see if my predictions were correct or not.
I think this is an awesome middle grade or struggling reader book, however, if a person is not into fantasy I think it would be a hard sell. It makes some wonderful points everyone can relate to, but as mentioned above there is a lot of really heavy weirdness and world building that would be hard to get someone who is not into fantasy to buy into.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
pagesofpins's review against another edition
4.0
Often in fantasy stories there is a race of trolls/orcs/goblins whose only purpose is to be the evil race of henchmen. The authors cleverly turn this on its head with a fantasy novel about culture clash and societies ridden with propaganda, in which a troll tries desperately to be a gracious host to an elf despite their nations having been at war and their people hating each other for centuries. It has some chapters as prose and some chapters as illustration, which often contradict each other, showing the difference between perception and reality, and how (hilariously or tragically) cultures misunderstand each other.
jarichan's review against another edition
4.0
Dieses Buch war genau das, was ich in diesen hektischen Wochen gebraucht habe. Eine witzige Geschichte mit (mehr oder weniger) sympathischen Figuren und phantastischen Abenteuern.
Einerseits lässr sich das Ganze genau so lesen wie oben geschrieben, aber man kann es auch als Märchen darüber interpretieren, wie zwei Völker, die dazu erzogen wurden, sich abgrundtief zu hassen, dies trotz aller Widrigkeiten überwinden und zu Freunden werden.
Dem Autoren scheint das relativ gleich zu sein. Hauptsache, man hat Spass bei der Sache. Und den hatte ich auf jeden. Die Ideen sind frisch und unverbraucht; oft kicherte ich in aller Öffentlichkeit vor mich hin und es war mir egal, was die Passanten dachten. Die Szenen sind einfach zu herrlich.
Das liegt auch an der grossen Qualität des Hörbuches. Es ist eines der besten, die ich bisher gehört habe. Dies führte dazu, dass Spurges Geschichte zu einem der wenigen Hörbüchern wurde, die ich nicht auf 1.2facher-Geschwindigkeit hörte. Ich wollte jedes Wort geniessen.
Und trotzdem war viel zu schnell Schluss. Ich vermisse Spurge und Werfel bereits.
Einerseits lässr sich das Ganze genau so lesen wie oben geschrieben, aber man kann es auch als Märchen darüber interpretieren, wie zwei Völker, die dazu erzogen wurden, sich abgrundtief zu hassen, dies trotz aller Widrigkeiten überwinden und zu Freunden werden.
Dem Autoren scheint das relativ gleich zu sein. Hauptsache, man hat Spass bei der Sache. Und den hatte ich auf jeden. Die Ideen sind frisch und unverbraucht; oft kicherte ich in aller Öffentlichkeit vor mich hin und es war mir egal, was die Passanten dachten. Die Szenen sind einfach zu herrlich.
Das liegt auch an der grossen Qualität des Hörbuches. Es ist eines der besten, die ich bisher gehört habe. Dies führte dazu, dass Spurges Geschichte zu einem der wenigen Hörbüchern wurde, die ich nicht auf 1.2facher-Geschwindigkeit hörte. Ich wollte jedes Wort geniessen.
Und trotzdem war viel zu schnell Schluss. Ich vermisse Spurge und Werfel bereits.
youkirmv's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
heatherbermingham's review against another edition
5.0
For some reason, I couldn't wrap my brain around what this book was based on the descriptions I read so I kept picking it up and putting it down, but after it showed up on pretty much every best-of-the-year list I read, I decided I had to at least try it. Turns out that hey, sometimes people know what they're talking about because I loved it. On one hand, it's a silly elf-goblin buddy comedy. On the other hand, it says a lot of interesting (and true) things about how we often cling to our preconceptions or what we've been taught about others, even in the face of evidence that tells us otherwise. One of the characters mostly narrates the events while the other sends communications back to his land in visuals and the visuals he's sending back often don't match the story being told which is a great storytelling device that could start a lot of discussion if read with kids. I'd be really interested in reading and discussing this with a class or small reading group.