Reviews

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

mamagarrett3's review against another edition

4.0

I think I would have given this book five stars except for the ending. It was a wonderful, engaging book right up to the end, where it feels like the authors editors said, hey, let's jump on the trilogy band wagon and rope the fans in for another 15 bucks! I am sick to death of trilogies, but there is no way there is not another book about Ice Cream Star, and I loved her so much, you know I'll be reading it.

archergal's review against another edition

3.0

I gave up about half-way through. :(

I was fine with the language. I was fine with the post-apocalyptic setting.

But the author lost me at the pseudo-catholic repetition of the Marias and their white Jesuses. My WSOD failed at the thought of a culture of people younger than about 20 maintaining that sort of belief system. It just didn't make any sense to me. And within that societal framework, I honestly didn't care what else happened, because I'd lost my belief in the basis of the book.

So for me, it was half of a good book. Maybe some day I'll try it again.

eowyns_helmet's review against another edition

3.0

Honest: I didn't finish. After a certain point, the weight of a white female writer using her version of ebonics to express the speech of non-white teens in a post apocalyptic world just became ... too much. A lot of the writing was beautiful and arresting. But I wonder if this book got in just under the wire of the current (and welcome) We Need Diverse Books movement. I don't think it would have been published, say, a year later. I started to ask myself why this curious tick of speech was really, really necessary to tell this particular story. And I came up with the conclusion that it wasn't, not really. Compared to books like Station Eleven or The Girl With All the Gifts, this book, in the end, seemed too much an oddity that ended up detracting from, not enhancing, the story she was trying to tell.

megatsunami's review against another edition

5.0

I almost gave up on this book after the first 25 pages or so, because it was really slow going at first with the invented dialect, but I'm glad I kept going because it was so worth it. Emotionally rich and action-packed, full of moral complexity and three-dimensional characters. I found a few details of the world-building to be unconvincing, but on the other hand, there's a lot the narrator doesn't know, so it feels okay that everything's not explained. (Also, whaaa? The Russians are the world superpower? Is this 1955?)

Note: There is quite a bit of violence - not told in gratuitous detail, but there's a lot of it.

serinde4books's review against another edition

So I picked up this book because I read the review by Oprah, and it had lots of high rating on Good Reads, it sounded interesting. And I'm sure it is, I'm invested in the story I want to read it and find out what happens. The problem is that it is written in this horrible language, like Ebonics. It is horrid to read and distracts so much from the story that I wouldn't force myself to finish. I got about through chapter 9 (56 pages) and I decided that I have limited reading time and I couldn't justify torturing myself with this, when reading is my one guilty pleasure. The reviews all complimented Newman on her language skills and how poetic and touching the writing was. I couldn't swallow it. It was torture not poetry to me. I want to know what happens, it seems fascinating, but until it is translated into normal English I will have to let it go.
For additional reviews please see my blog at www.adventuresofabibliophile.blogspot.com

emilybryk's review against another edition

4.0

Good heavens yes for the long-game dialect and the tribal beginnings. (Why is this not compared to Riddley Walker more often?) Good heavens no because it turns into yet another young-children-having-a-war dystopia.

audreyvm's review

4.0

The pace of this really picked up in the second half. I'd still say it could have been shorter, but it was an enjoyable and (mostly) fresh read.

robynryle's review against another edition

3.0

Really interesting idea. You do eventually get used to the language. In fact, afterward, you might find yourself calling things "bone" or "bellesse." But it's hard to know a first person narrator when the language is a barrier to her thoughts instead of a way inside. You know what's happening most of the time. Because of the language, it's hard to really feel like you know Ice Cream Star and the people around her. It also seems to be a series of events rather than a coherent narrative arc.

tobesmagobes's review against another edition

5.0

Sometimes you read a book so good everything you've read recently seems crappy by comparison. This is one of those times. The invented post-pandemic dialects were hard to get into at first but it was worth it, especially for the whole Marias segment. Amazing.

ailsahatton's review against another edition

3.0

This was challenging to read. At best, the way it was written enhanced the world building, and some of the language was both interesting and beautiful. Mostly it just made it difficult to read - I ended up buying it in hard copy because I found I just couldn't get into it at all on kindle. At worst, I missed parts - possibly because I'm used to reading things fast and this was something you needed to take more time to understand than I was willing to offer it.

I missed a death that I knew was supposed to have more impact than I felt on first read, and even when I reread it I wasn't quite sure what had happened.

Even after re-reading the ending a couple times I'm still not sure what was up with that, either.

I did enjoy it - it was new, and it was interesting, but I think if you took the way it was written away it wouldn't have been either. Everyone was in love with Icecream and that got a bit old - I'm not sure I ever managed to properly care about any of the characters or their goals, and bits of it were too predictable.

Probably this is just a 'not for me' review more than anything else. Glad I stuck it out to the end, but not exactly up in my faves.