A review by naokamiya
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
3.0
Despite my middling rating, I enjoyed "The Library at Mount Char" far more than it would suggest. It's a rapidly and immaculately building cauldron of cosmic dread and mystery, and the characters are dripping with personality, even the ones whose sense of morality and humanity is so alien to ours that they should be impossible to understand. The book is fantastically trippy and surreal as well, there's imagery in this thing that I can safely say I don't think I've ever seen elsewhere, at least not in the way it's pulled off here.
My main problem with "Mount Char" which prevents me from rating it higher is just how inaccessible this is. I know, I know - coming from me this sounds ridiculous, as I have a love for the weird and "out there", but "Mount Char" drops you into its world without hand holding at all and forces you to uncover its secrets for yourself, and even then good luck understanding what's really going on in the lore by the end. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, in fact I usually love it, but here it was simply a matter of investment. It was difficult to get invested for the first 150 or so pages, and though it picks up and starts to become (slightly) more comprehensible, it's nonetheless a bit frustrating that my emotional investment didn't really set in until halfway. Still, this book is great, and it will probably take another read to parse.
My main problem with "Mount Char" which prevents me from rating it higher is just how inaccessible this is. I know, I know - coming from me this sounds ridiculous, as I have a love for the weird and "out there", but "Mount Char" drops you into its world without hand holding at all and forces you to uncover its secrets for yourself, and even then good luck understanding what's really going on in the lore by the end. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, in fact I usually love it, but here it was simply a matter of investment. It was difficult to get invested for the first 150 or so pages, and though it picks up and starts to become (slightly) more comprehensible, it's nonetheless a bit frustrating that my emotional investment didn't really set in until halfway. Still, this book is great, and it will probably take another read to parse.