This is a short review for a different reason than normal. Normally, it’s to avoid spoilers, in that the near end changes how the rest of novel’s tone and story.
This time, it’s because the reader piecing everything together is the major point of the story. The hilarity of it is that you may finish the novel, and have no idea what the point was and miss all the symbolism in the characters and in the story itself. It’s not to the degree of something like the Animal Farm, but it’s a good comparison of what I mean.
It uses a few pieces of literature as its foundation, such as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh(I think Narnia was in there as well), etc, and then expand it to its own trippy scenario.
There’s a few bad endings that you should go to either get yourself some more insight on the story or just to get yourself lost some more.
For the most part, I think you should be able to match most of the characters together. While I say that, I never got who was the guy who tried to buy the dancer from Torunga. My guess it’s a generalization of temptation from the rest of the cast.
I recommend using a walkthrough for the novel, it can feel quite meta.
In the end, the novel can be quite artsy so avoid it if you dislike it. Honestly, these types of novels aren’t my cup of tea, I couldn’t even finish Sharnoth, However, it’s still intriguing and the ending is quite beautiful.
I’d give it a C if you see if you just give it a glance. This is much more suited as discussion material and resembles much more of rich literature. It doesn’t hold your hand, it assumes you’re smart enough to catch its intricacies and give it a nod.
As readers go, there’s going to be three categories.
A) You’re going to be Lil’ Jon and just go wat?
B) That I see what you did there meme
C) Fry’s “not sure” meme
If you look into it more deeply and see this in a more serious manner, I’d give it an A because it’s quite smart on how it gives you the pieces in the beginning while giving you the links to them later. However, there were times where I had to trudge along so I couldn’t give it a perfect score.
Side Note: If you are going to read it, try to figure out what the forest is. There’s probably multiple conclusions, the one I ended up with is quite fascinating.
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