Ourania
Kind of disappointed.
I bought this on a whim, based on the description on the back. The premise sounded great, plus the author received a Nobel prize for Literature, so I thought it would be much better, and much more interesting.
Maybe the author's other books are more interesting, but this started out with an interesting idea, but the main character and narrator becomes really dull, and doesn't really develop during the story.
The other thing that bothered me was the changes in the person of the narrator. There are a few chapters where two of the secondary characters write letters. These sound exactly the same like the narration before it. Maybe it's just me, but I have a problem from the start if a story is in first person.
This was especially bad in the case of this book for the last few chapters. The narration suddenly changes to third person and to an omniscient narrator. And then back again to first person for the main character Daniel's narration. There is also an appendix with a description of the trip that the main character Daniel takes at the end of the book. And a series of rules of the cult. These are entirely out of context. These may have been useful at the start of the section with the cult and maybe right after Daniel goes on the trip. But at the end of the book? Why?
All in all it's not terrible, and it's not great either, but very much mediocre. There are a few (very few and very short) passages and ideas that are interesting, and I would have loved to further explore them, but sadly that didn't happen. This would have been much better if it was a bit more detailed and a little longer.
But hey, I'm not the writer.
