Five stars for great writing, creative story-line and intriguing characters; on the other hand, I won't even pretend that I knew what was going on half the time.

By Miéville's marmosets what a book. A dark tentacled fuzzy wandering masterpiece, part Area X of Jeff Vandermeer's books, part Alan Moore and part all itself, this is a heavy clever work, pair it with a Deftones record and watch it go. Now where's my sentient longbow?

The language is beautiful, and its smoothness and ethereal quality takes a lot of responsibility for keeping my interest. I’m confused by the inclusion of some character arcs - Eadweard Muybridge and Sarah Winchester particularly - whose existence in our own world took me out of the fantasy of this world a bit. Nothing felt particularly changed or accomplished at the end, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Escaping into this world is at the same time exciting, uncomfortable, mysterious and sometimes disappointingly predictable.

This book was incredibly hard to get through. With the description on the back, I was expecting more action but I actually couldn’t finish it.

Expectations: magical forest, biblical "mythology" .
Reality: horny cyclop, useless side plots.

"Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”

This is how every woman has been written into this book.

Every fucking woman.

There is no denying the author can spin words more poetic and flowery than the classics. But he needs to work on compelling characters. The plot fell between amazing and flat due to these two facts. I couldn't keep my attention on more than half the storylines and struggled to keep reading in many places.

The story opened with a bloody scene that didn't end up mattering, except to completely confuse the reader in regards to what time period/world the story's set. There's magical bow/arrows, ghosts, monsters, and references to modern technologies that wouldn't make sense in a magical land, so this must be Our world? Our time?

Honestly, I can't even finish this review. This book infuriated me. The writing was poetic, which held me captive throughout the whole thing. But it was a serious struggle all the way through.

Religione e fantasy fanno da sfondo alla storia di diversi personaggi che si incontrano e si scontrano in continui ribaltamenti che spiazzano continuamente il lettore. Molto ben scritto, solo che la trama "irrequieta" non consente - alla fine di questo primo libro - di capire se andrà a parare da qualche parte o meno. Certo viene voglia di passare subito al secondo volume sperando che tutte le promesse sospese nel primo vengano mantenute.
Per ora, 4 stelle.

For a fantasy book about the colonization of Africa, there’s a lot of conversations that aren’t had. The plot is so dense and there are so many characters that it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. I’m mildly interested in the sequels but I know as soon as I finish this review I will forget all 500 pages.