I really enjoyed this! It's definitely the longest, densest classic that I've read yet, so I was quite pleased that I didn't struggle much. The only difficult bits were really the politics/farming discussion and the Russian naming structure. I feel like it'd be nice to have a brief explanation on how their names work since the characters have several and I was slightly confused lol.

But I loved the characters. I loved their complexities and their (many) flaws. I loved how real they felt. I really enjoyed the complex relationships that were built and layered throughout the books. He does such a fantastic job of building this entire community of relationships. Everyone is connected to everyone else in a myriad of intricate ways. It was masterful.

I struggled a bit with the melodrama. It reads like a telenovela, which is very fun, but at times it is very over the top and loses that sense of reality that I enjoy so much. I want to be as invested in the characters as possible and there's a bit of distance created with the melodrama.

I also struggled with the way women were treated by the narrative. It feels like a moral story to me about women's role in society. It was a great deal more than that, but the underlying theme was there. I recognize that not everyone reads the story that way, but I couldn't shake that interpretation.

Overall, I really enjoyed this, though. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more Tolstoy and giving War and Peace a second try. I'd recommend this for people who like soap operas and stories about complex relationships and unlikable characters.