kyatic's Reviews (974)

Just a beautiful book. I read on average 50 books a year as a sort of personal challenge, and this was by far the best one I read in 2015. That it's self-published is sort of unbelievable to me; I think a lot of people have a view of self-published works being somehow inferior to those released by publishing houses, and thank god that gems like this exist to prove that idea wrong.

So, yes. I loved this book. I read it mostly in two sittings, and it was just phenomenal. I initially bought the Kindle book and then, after finishing it, shelled out for a print copy so that it could have a place on my bookshelf. I can't list the reasons I love this book. You need to read it yourself.

I was interested in this book as I'd had a similar idea for a story myself a few years back (about a child investigating the life of a sibling they'd never known) and I thought I would see how this author kept the narrative going. For the plot of this book, I'd give 3 stars - it's quite a gripping idea, but the characters are so thinly drawn that I just stopped caring after a while. As for the style; well, I can imagine the draw behind translating your own work and having control of it in as many languages as possible, but I really feel like this work suffered for it. The translation was stilted and very off-putting at times. The dialogue felt childish and rudimentary to a point that couldn't be put down to simple stylistics. I'm sure that the original text is a much better read, but for those of you who would be reading the English version, I must warn you that you'll need to sit through some pretty abysmal prose and even worse dialogue. As for the cover - honestly, it looked like I'd signed myself up for some sort of Lolita-esque homoerotica, which hey, if that's your thing, then great. It's not what the book actually is (for which I was grateful) so don't judge this book by its cover.

Overall, an interesting story let down greatly by the international publishing process. I'd happily read and recommend a retranslated version done by a professional and sympathetic translator of literature, but I can't recommend this book in its current version.