A review by jordantaylor
Fortune by Lenny Bartulin
1.0
What a mess.
I finished Fortune bewildered and dazed by the whiplash of the story. And, unfortunately, I don't mean any of that in a good way.
I really wanted this one to work. I was initially drawn in by the vibrantly beautiful cover, and then was pleasantly surprised when the description revealed that the book was largely set in Napoleonic Prussia. The descriptors promised that the book would be "A gripping, globe-spanning historical epic." I couldn't wait to see how the characters would end up going from Napoleon's Europe to South America, to Australia.
The novel opens with Napoleon parading gloriously through the streets of Berlin, as the people of the city strain to catch a glimpse of him. One of those people, caught in the crowd, is 18 year old Johannes. Apparently, according to the author, the event of an emperor strutting through the streets stirs uncontrollable lust in various women, many of who are "unable to resist" their urges.
Hmm... okay.
To prove this point, a girl who works at a coffee-house Johannes frequents happens to catch sight of him in the crowd. Without even greeting each other, she ends up immediately initiating a sexual encounter. She takes his hand in hers and brings him to her employer's house, where they brazenly have sex in front of a window out to the street.
As they are having sex, the famous author Stendhal walks by and watches them for a few minutes, until he is scared off by an approaching young lady. That young lady also stops to watch the two having sex, and Johannes looks up. Their eyes meet and apparently they form some sort of deep connection as he is literally inside another girl.
This all happened within the first few pages, and I was amused and bewildered (still in a mostly good way, so far). I definitely had not been expecting a triumphant Napoleonic parade to end in hookups and peeping Toms and - whatever it was that just happened.
At this point, I got the impression that the book was random and unpredictable, which I like.
There were already a few red flags - some very poor, amateur writing popping up in certain paragraphs, as well as strange titles (?) every few paragraphs or pages.
The author would include what seemed almost like chapter titles in bold, large letters that would preface as little as a couple paragraphs or up to a few pages of writing. This immediately struck me as annoying, but perhaps it was some quirk to the author's style that I would grow to accept as the story progressed (I did not).
These few misgivings aside, I mused that judging by the first dozen or so pages, I was in for a wild ride.
And was I ever right, because Fortune did indeed end up being a wild, unpredictable ride.
I mean that in the worst way.
This book tries to be everything at once, struggling so hard to be "expansive" and "epic" that it comes across as desperate. We are bombarded with hundreds of characters (one reviewer said "thousands," which certainly feels right), and given no time to get to know them. The reader is given no chance or reason to care what happens to any of them, and it would be absolutely impossible to pin down just who the main characters are, or who we are supposed to be rooting for. I had no sense of who anyone was, and did not care.
No doubt looking to add "meticulously detailed" to what he hoped reviewers would describe his book as, Bartulin throws absolutely everything we can (or would never) think of into the story.
Every single character is given a chance to jostle their way into the narrative, from the most inconsequential to the most powerful figures of the age.
The nameless guard making a note of Johannes' entry into the army? We switch to his thoughts and mindset for a few sentences. When another character is purchasing eels, we are given the entire, long story of years of the seller's life. When at one point Johannes picks up a trinket that has nothing to do with the story, we hear about the life of the woman who found it decades ago. We also are given glimpses into the thoughts of Napoleon, Empress Josephine, and various other influential players, although this is completely unnecessary to the story, and they are only lingered on for a few collective paragraphs. Stendhal, given a cameo of sorts at the beginning, does not re-appear until the end of the book - both instances needless. (I was disappointed that Stendhal didn't end up becoming an actual character, since coincidentally I am currently reading his famous novel The Red and the Black.)
The book switches perspectives at a dizzying breakneck speed, making it one long, tedious blur of characters. Absolutely none of them seem integral to the story. Even the two characters who appear most, and whose names perhaps I might draw out of the mire of faceless people as possibly the two protagonists (Johannes and Elisabeth) could have been removed from the book, and it would not have changed it all that much.
All in all, this book was jarring and disjointed, astoundingly convoluted, and bogged down with far, far, far too many characters.
Very disappointing and not recommended.
Thanks nevertheless to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for an ARC copy.
I finished Fortune bewildered and dazed by the whiplash of the story. And, unfortunately, I don't mean any of that in a good way.
I really wanted this one to work. I was initially drawn in by the vibrantly beautiful cover, and then was pleasantly surprised when the description revealed that the book was largely set in Napoleonic Prussia. The descriptors promised that the book would be "A gripping, globe-spanning historical epic." I couldn't wait to see how the characters would end up going from Napoleon's Europe to South America, to Australia.
The novel opens with Napoleon parading gloriously through the streets of Berlin, as the people of the city strain to catch a glimpse of him. One of those people, caught in the crowd, is 18 year old Johannes. Apparently, according to the author, the event of an emperor strutting through the streets stirs uncontrollable lust in various women, many of who are "unable to resist" their urges.
Hmm... okay.
To prove this point, a girl who works at a coffee-house Johannes frequents happens to catch sight of him in the crowd. Without even greeting each other, she ends up immediately initiating a sexual encounter. She takes his hand in hers and brings him to her employer's house, where they brazenly have sex in front of a window out to the street.
As they are having sex, the famous author Stendhal walks by and watches them for a few minutes, until he is scared off by an approaching young lady. That young lady also stops to watch the two having sex, and Johannes looks up. Their eyes meet and apparently they form some sort of deep connection as he is literally inside another girl.
This all happened within the first few pages, and I was amused and bewildered (still in a mostly good way, so far). I definitely had not been expecting a triumphant Napoleonic parade to end in hookups and peeping Toms and - whatever it was that just happened.
At this point, I got the impression that the book was random and unpredictable, which I like.
There were already a few red flags - some very poor, amateur writing popping up in certain paragraphs, as well as strange titles (?) every few paragraphs or pages.
The author would include what seemed almost like chapter titles in bold, large letters that would preface as little as a couple paragraphs or up to a few pages of writing. This immediately struck me as annoying, but perhaps it was some quirk to the author's style that I would grow to accept as the story progressed (I did not).
These few misgivings aside, I mused that judging by the first dozen or so pages, I was in for a wild ride.
And was I ever right, because Fortune did indeed end up being a wild, unpredictable ride.
I mean that in the worst way.
This book tries to be everything at once, struggling so hard to be "expansive" and "epic" that it comes across as desperate. We are bombarded with hundreds of characters (one reviewer said "thousands," which certainly feels right), and given no time to get to know them. The reader is given no chance or reason to care what happens to any of them, and it would be absolutely impossible to pin down just who the main characters are, or who we are supposed to be rooting for. I had no sense of who anyone was, and did not care.
No doubt looking to add "meticulously detailed" to what he hoped reviewers would describe his book as, Bartulin throws absolutely everything we can (or would never) think of into the story.
Every single character is given a chance to jostle their way into the narrative, from the most inconsequential to the most powerful figures of the age.
The nameless guard making a note of Johannes' entry into the army? We switch to his thoughts and mindset for a few sentences. When another character is purchasing eels, we are given the entire, long story of years of the seller's life. When at one point Johannes picks up a trinket that has nothing to do with the story, we hear about the life of the woman who found it decades ago. We also are given glimpses into the thoughts of Napoleon, Empress Josephine, and various other influential players, although this is completely unnecessary to the story, and they are only lingered on for a few collective paragraphs. Stendhal, given a cameo of sorts at the beginning, does not re-appear until the end of the book - both instances needless. (I was disappointed that Stendhal didn't end up becoming an actual character, since coincidentally I am currently reading his famous novel The Red and the Black.)
The book switches perspectives at a dizzying breakneck speed, making it one long, tedious blur of characters. Absolutely none of them seem integral to the story. Even the two characters who appear most, and whose names perhaps I might draw out of the mire of faceless people as possibly the two protagonists (Johannes and Elisabeth) could have been removed from the book, and it would not have changed it all that much.
All in all, this book was jarring and disjointed, astoundingly convoluted, and bogged down with far, far, far too many characters.
Very disappointing and not recommended.
Thanks nevertheless to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for an ARC copy.