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timmytunter's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Prophet Song is an unflinching and emotionally brutal portrayal of a nation spiralling into war. Paul Lynch’s novel grips the reader with its intensity, pulling you into the heart of a society on the brink of collapse.
What stands out most is Lynch’s exceptional prose. His unconventional descriptions of everyday moments breathe life into the narrative in ways that are unexpected yet striking.
For instance, when describing a simple exchange, Lynch writes:
What stands out most is Lynch’s exceptional prose. His unconventional descriptions of everyday moments breathe life into the narrative in ways that are unexpected yet striking.
For instance, when describing a simple exchange, Lynch writes:
She finds herself watching the face so intensely she is met with the feeling of an existence unalterably separate from hers, can feel her smile uncoupling from her face, the smile sliding past her jaw onto the floor.
Or this vivid depiction of a tender yet tragic moment:
What has been stored in the body, what has been locked in the heart gives release through Molly’s mouth into sobbing…We have entered into a tunnel and there is no going back, she says, we just need to keep going and going until we reach the light on the other side.
Lynch’s writing is both beautiful and harrowing, capturing the emotional toll of life under siege. The novel’s intensity weighs heavily, and while I found it incredibly powerful, I have no desire to read it again—not because it’s a bad book, but because of its emotional heft. The experience was profound, but draining.
That said, Prophet Song is a novel everyone should read at least once. It exposes the jarring and tragic realities of life in a war-torn country in a way that will leave you both shaken and reflective. The devastating truth is that this depiction accurately reflects the reality for many in our world today, a fact which is cause for pause, reflection, and action.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, and War
Moderate: Torture and Dementia
aseel_reads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
I think the idea of the story was interesting but I hate this style of execution and it was really hard to concentrate on the story. Some plot events had me super engaged um bailey dying?? Wtf but like it took me so long to remember the names of the kids and I felt like the mum could have been more proactive, especially in the second half
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, Torture, Medical content, Dementia, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and Sexual harassment
marmalou_'s review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
I wont ever forget this story.
Set in a modern-day Ireland at the start of a civil war, where the country quickly descends into a totalitarian regime. The story follows Eilish trying to hold her family together amongst the terror and chaos as their lives unravel around them. A very tough read because this dystopian world doesn’t seem that far away.
4.5* but would have been 5* if I hadn’t found the writing style so challenging
Set in a modern-day Ireland at the start of a civil war, where the country quickly descends into a totalitarian regime. The story follows Eilish trying to hold her family together amongst the terror and chaos as their lives unravel around them. A very tough read because this dystopian world doesn’t seem that far away.
4.5* but would have been 5* if I hadn’t found the writing style so challenging
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Torture, War, and Injury/Injury detail
nialiversuch's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Grief, Abandonment, and War
Moderate: Child death, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Dementia, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Eating disorder and Vomit
antimony's review against another edition
dark
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.5
i really wanted to like this book bc molly liked it so much and i do like a good dystopian it has to be said but unfortunately it didn't click with me.
i liked a few scenes and i really liked whenever i recognized a landmark or the name of a suburb (when eilish was looking for mark and lied and said he was james(?) from ranelagh and i thought hey! that's the town with the church i went to so i could see their harry clarke window but it was locked and i couldn't get in!). the end was also crazy THEY JUST PUT THEM ON RAFTS AND SAID FIGURE IT OUT???? like i knoww the right place in antrim is just 10 miles from scotland but STILL WHATTT.
but these are the things i did not like:
1. THE WRITING STYLE. in the best of circumstances (a short story) i am totally unbothered by a lack of quotation marks. if it's a full length novel and dialogue isn't even italicised to keep it distinct from body text it starts to grate on my nerves but i could deal with it. what i could NOT deal with was the lack of PARAGRAPHS. HELLO??? who does that... this made it absolutely impossible for me to focus on this book, especially if i looked up and then had to find my place again without the shape of a paragraph to guide me. this drove me up the walls.
i think that this writing style also kept me at a remove from the story. the run-on sentences and lack of quotes can work occasionally but in prophet song it's supposed to be intimate and harsh but this style to me feels like everything is a bit of a haze to wander through. like really absolutely tragic things happened in this book but i couldn't really sink into the feelings of them because the writing kept me so distant from it all. which is obviously a personal problem but my rating is my personal enjoyment. oh well
2. also maybe i've just accidentally overlooked it bc it took a while to get into the swing of this book, but it never really talks about how ireland got into this situation. and i don't mean that it's too sudden, because of course these sort of things happen slowly and then all at once and the characters were busy, they might not have noticed what their country was hurtling towards. but totalitarian regimes don't come out of nowhere. the people who create them are elected and then they take total control from there (or there's a revolution but it seems like the situation in prophet song is more of the first sort) and they are elected by people who agree with them; they have to have some sort of platform. did they promise a return to tradition or intensified religion? did they appeal to a fear of immigrants or a fear of the future or the gold-tinged memory of the past? they were elected for a reason and then their build their reigns from that first stone of their campaign. but the regime in this book has no sense of that. it seems as though the crazy government just became like that overnight, with no sense of what the ordinary-sounding policies they built themselves up on at first were like. does that make any sense at all?
i liked a few scenes and i really liked whenever i recognized a landmark or the name of a suburb (when eilish was looking for mark and lied and said he was james(?) from ranelagh and i thought hey! that's the town with the church i went to so i could see their harry clarke window but it was locked and i couldn't get in!). the end was also crazy
but these are the things i did not like:
1. THE WRITING STYLE. in the best of circumstances (a short story) i am totally unbothered by a lack of quotation marks. if it's a full length novel and dialogue isn't even italicised to keep it distinct from body text it starts to grate on my nerves but i could deal with it. what i could NOT deal with was the lack of PARAGRAPHS. HELLO??? who does that... this made it absolutely impossible for me to focus on this book, especially if i looked up and then had to find my place again without the shape of a paragraph to guide me. this drove me up the walls.
i think that this writing style also kept me at a remove from the story. the run-on sentences and lack of quotes can work occasionally but in prophet song it's supposed to be intimate and harsh but this style to me feels like everything is a bit of a haze to wander through. like really absolutely tragic things happened in this book but i couldn't really sink into the feelings of them because the writing kept me so distant from it all. which is obviously a personal problem but my rating is my personal enjoyment. oh well
2. also maybe i've just accidentally overlooked it bc it took a while to get into the swing of this book, but it never really talks about how ireland got into this situation. and i don't mean that it's too sudden, because of course these sort of things happen slowly and then all at once and the characters were busy, they might not have noticed what their country was hurtling towards. but totalitarian regimes don't come out of nowhere. the people who create them are elected and then they take total control from there (or there's a revolution but it seems like the situation in prophet song is more of the first sort) and they are elected by people who agree with them; they have to have some sort of platform. did they promise a return to tradition or intensified religion? did they appeal to a fear of immigrants or a fear of the future or the gold-tinged memory of the past? they were elected for a reason and then their build their reigns from that first stone of their campaign. but the regime in this book has no sense of that. it seems as though the crazy government just became like that overnight, with no sense of what the ordinary-sounding policies they built themselves up on at first were like. does that make any sense at all?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Violence, and War
edward_eb's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I was really gripped by this book. Very pertinent to the terrible events happening all over the world today. And at its heart a book about family and love and the things people will do to keep what feels most familiar and safe, sometimes at a deadly cost. At points it was almost too sad and frustrating but absolutely worth the read and well crafted. It lends itself to audiobook very well too.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Torture, Police brutality, Dementia, and War
Minor: Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Murder
imagemaps's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Made me feel like I was living Eilish's life, I felt her grief, shock, anger and heartbreak.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, and War
Moderate: Police brutality
seasonedreadings's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence and War
Moderate: Child death and Torture
gvstyris's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those that did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet.
Although Prophet Song is a somewhat unconvincing dystopia, it is undeniably a hauntingly relevant chronicle of the migrant crisis. Lynch successfully flips Western apathy on its head by depicting the gradual erosion of law and order in a totalitarian Ireland; an ambitious yet admirable premise.
I struggled a lot with Lynch's stylistic choices, particularly the absence of paragraph breaks. While the stream of consciousness creates the intended tone of claustrophobia and panic, it is difficult to digest and made reading this quite a slog. I was more successful with the audiobook, although I really can't understand why it has a male narrator...?
That being said, I also think it's important to acknowledge that this book probably wasn't intended for me. I'm honestly too young to relate to Eilish's sacrifice and love for her children, and found that I learned more (about the refugee crisis and writing dystopia respectively) from As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow and The Handmaid's Tale.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, and Death of parent
Moderate: Violence, Police brutality, Dementia, and War
Minor: Gun violence and Xenophobia
artistic_nightsky's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, and Violence