A review by jpowerj
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville

3.0

[Disclaimer: my attention span is terrible, which did not help in trying to keep up with the events in this book. Also I'd give it 3.5 stars if that was possible] Admittedly, I had overly-high expectations - Mieville said in an interview that he had to cut a ton of stuff out, and I feel like this is very evident in the text. I kept finding myself asking like "wait, why are they meeting now? Where? What was the purpose of this meeting? Who led the meeting? What was the press coverage of the meeting like (though this was sometimes discussed) Who wasn't able to make the meeting? Did that affect the outcome?" and so on. I was just confused throughout the book about how/why/when certain people/groups had openly switched sides or had secretly decided to side with Kerensky (for example). Basically I think it could have just had 3 long chapters - February, July, and October - with all of these details, rather than a chapter for each month. The October chapter was a big blur to me, the only part I really "got" was the battles over the different bridges.