Usually when I at least complete a book I will give it two stars, but I honestly don’t think this deserves that. It is technically inept at a craft level in every way except for being readable and clear. It ranges from terrible dialogue to the worst pacing I have ever experienced in a maximalist effort, to not only really bad characterization—especially in regards to women, which Murakami simply cannot write—but every character is inactive, many are as superfluous as much of the actual text.

It does manage to produce an interesting conceit by the end, then the conceit ironically all but invalidates the entirety of the fiction. There are no interesting ideas being explored, there is no definitive answers, nor would they matter. The conceit itself isn’t explained satisfactorily and neither is there a point being made. It is quite literally a pointless, aimless work that attempts to garner satisfaction from the reader by way of innocuous gotcha moments that stack up to say something like, maybe, if you have love, you can escape the darkness we ourselves create in our internal worlds. Except that may not be true either, since there are many doubts as to what the actual outcome is.

The conceit also handwaves the many problematic elements of the fiction and as such feels like an adolescent indulgence in pointless sex, assault on minors, and other trauma. This feels like a pattern with Murakami, who uses verisimilitude as armour in every work I’ve read.

The final book is also sinfully boring until the very end. Neither is any book structured to be a complete story, so you basically have to just plow through to get any answers whatsoever. Yet the advancement of most of the plot is in the first two volumes.

Where I fall on this is, because of its length, it has even more of an obligation to justify the craft in the final product, which it simply cannot do. It is by far the worst maximalist effort I have ever had the misfortune of consuming. The junk food of the form.