illegible_scribble
5/30/2021
I honestly don't understand all of the plaudits this novel has received. It's as if the author kept an Idea Book, full of observations, visual impressions, and poetic turns of phrase which came to mind, and then sat down and sketched up the bare bones of a plot which he could use to showcase everything in his Idea Book, with added Lovecraftian elements to make it SFF.
And "bare bones" it is, indeed. The characters are all such vapid, personality-less entities that I was rather horrified by the idea that there might be a lot of human beings in real life who are as vacuous and devoid of internal life as these. And apart from the Lovecraftian creatures, there's just no actual story here.
Readers who find works worthwhile for flowery prose with vivid imagery might enjoy this book, but those looking for good characterization and plotting are almost certainly going to be disappointed.