Fine and Climbing
Jan. 17th, 2019 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearEleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman has been selected for our next Family Book Club meeting, and I'm definitely looking forward to the discussion. It's a really interesting book that goes in some unexpected directions. The protagonist is clearly on the autism spectrum and her perspective is very effectively portrayed as she goes about her day-to-day life and responds to her interactions with others. But there's a lot more going on, which is hinted at throughout. By halfway through, I felt it was getting a bit repetitive and definitely dragging, but it takes a dramatic turn in the second half and delves into some very dark waters. I guessed all of what was revealed by the end, but also came up with a theory that turned out not to be true, so it wasn't completely transparent. I'm really not sure why the book has been labelled 'uplit', though, since I don't consider a largely hopeful ending to mitigate all the trauma and darknes that comes before it.
Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft is a fantasy novel about a man who is separated from his new wife on their honeymoon and spends the rest of the book trying to find her. Their honeymoon destination was a huge and mysterious tower with uncounted different levels, so Senlin embarks on a systematic search, encountering many and varied different people and places along the way. The world-building is very good, and the narrative is densely and beautifully descriptive. However, this does undermine the tension and slow the action considerably. Also, Senlin's encounters seems reasonably arbitrary and get tedious as the book goes on, even if things do start to connect together a bit by the end. There wasn't enough plot to stretch out over one book to my mind, though, let alone a trilogy, so I won't be carrying on with this series.
Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft is a fantasy novel about a man who is separated from his new wife on their honeymoon and spends the rest of the book trying to find her. Their honeymoon destination was a huge and mysterious tower with uncounted different levels, so Senlin embarks on a systematic search, encountering many and varied different people and places along the way. The world-building is very good, and the narrative is densely and beautifully descriptive. However, this does undermine the tension and slow the action considerably. Also, Senlin's encounters seems reasonably arbitrary and get tedious as the book goes on, even if things do start to connect together a bit by the end. There wasn't enough plot to stretch out over one book to my mind, though, let alone a trilogy, so I won't be carrying on with this series.
