sspaghettiboness's Reviews (138)

I don’t remember the last time a book made me cry, nor particularly why this one did. But Haruki’s masterful ability at creating such moments of humongous magic in an otherwise completely boring world is absolutely inspiring. How he takes such average characters envelops them in otherworldly places built from the ones we all already know. 

I love the plot of the book, the pacing was the drama of a thriller, but the story a beautiful piece of a treasure hunt. One of my favourite Murakami books I’ve read to date. 

Bioshock Infinite meets The Umbrella Academy Season 1 in this fantastic novel. Peter Clines brought the energy from the first page, there was hardly a dull moment or pause in the reading. Each character was enjoyable to know, and the twists were both fun and unexpected. 

It’s hard because I read this after The Fold, which is probably one of the best science fiction books I’ve ever read, and I don’t think Paradox Bound is as good (but it’s close).

This was a fun read, not too much to have to think about, just enjoying the ride. 

Honestly I really like this book I’m just not in the mood for this genre right now, I am excited to read this soon though! I just started it at the wrong time. But what I did read was phenomenal - the descriptions are just enough, and the dialogue between the characters is so well written. It’s amazing. It’s just not what I need right now. 

The concept of the novel is over done and, in this case, not really that well executed in my opinion. The way the sentences were being cut off I genuinely thought was either a formatting error or editing mistake, it took me a couple pages to realise it was intentional. 

The main thing is I never felt connected to the characters. Their plight and struggles felt very 2D and the way they experienced things was. Underwhelming when I think it should’ve been overwhelming. 

I gave the book 2 stars because I like ominous atmosphere the author created, however brief those moments were, and I liked what they were trying to do. I think if this had been longer and really explored the ideas, it would’ve been a much stronger read. 

Maybe I’ll try again at some point but this whole beginning just dragged on in the most painful way. The way the characters are explaining things about themselves is such a bore I’ve fallen asleep twice. 

Just amazing. Written within an inch of it, brimming with dark humour and heartfelt observations about being a human, an oddity, or perhaps both. The narrative follows a well paced mixture of files which feel like short stories layered upon the plot following our protagonist. There was never a dull moment in reading. 

The writing here was overall great, there were some lines that made me stop reading for a second and just think. I liked the ambiguity of the characters, their aliases, and the way they interacted with one another did a great job of showing their relationships without spending too many words telling it. 

The concept was simple, a little on the nose considering everything we’ve just gone through (the stores with signs saying Out Of Masks really hit home, which is uncanny, because this was published in 2013). I like that the author created this little world in an epidemic and merely used that to provide atmosphere instead of waxing poetic about it. Very gritty. I also liked how they formatted speech, forgoing quotation marks. I like unusual writing in that way. 

I didn’t love the plot, and with a novella like this, to not have a gripping plot is a problem. Luckily it was short enough to just power through. I thought it was overdone and not transformed in an interesting way. It hit all the beats I was expecting it to, never deterred.

It’s an okay book, I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I did enjoy the prose. 

There was never a point during this book where I didn’t enjoy reading it. This reminded me, in many positive ways, of Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World, my favourite Murakami book to date (but I have a lot more reading to do before that’s final). The way he explored escapism and disassociation was, frankly, very relatable to me. It was clever how he wove those concepts into fixtures of this magical realism. And I liked how he grounded Toru’s journey with characters who had stories to tell that were so tangible and true, as a reader during their chapters it was like coming up for a breath of air before descending back down underwater.

There are things Murakami isn’t good at writing, from what I’ve seen, women being one of them. That was the same here, but I didn’t dwell on it too much because it wasn’t as much of a fixture to the story as it was in, say, Norwegian Wood. I actually was impressed with the Kano sisters, Nutmeg, and May, who seemed like people and not just sex objects. 

As a kid who played a lot of make believe and an adult who loves to make up and imagine little worlds, this book just really sparked my imagination and curiosity.