A review by cgreenstein
The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox

slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Long, meandering, made absolutely no sense, Jacob was the only one whose motivations followed logically from his character, and then even *that* fell apart at the end, nothing was ever explained or unraveled, the mysteries were either answered through stories within the story (telling, not showing) *or* they weren't explained at all-- there were so many leaps in this that the reader was expected to follow along with even though none of them made the remotest bit of sense at ALL, and then add to that page after page of boring scenery description, an academic conference, endless maundering about libraries... I don't understand why an editor didn't step in here. This book sounded great from the blurb, but what a complete letdown! I kept reading so that I could write a review to complain about it, and also out of (mostly, though not entirely, misplaced) hope that there would be an ending that explained what the heck was going on, but it was a fight-- I was able to finish it because I started skimming / skipping everything that didn't have Shift in it. (Also, if they could renegotiate the Tithe, why couldn't they renegotiate the memory loss every 200 years?) I just did not understand what on earth what was happening here, nor was there any consistent internal logic to it, and then it ended up being an environmentalist utopia novel? What??? The author clearly has an incredible facility with words, but that didn't save this book. It was a mess.
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