Skyggehavn-Shadow Port

I just could not get through it. Yes, I believe that the middle ages was bleak and terrifying for many people, but I don't care to read an unceasing and graphically described catalog of rape, child rape, syphilis, court intrigue leading to rape, child rape, horrific marriages, disease and shunning... you get the idea. There did appear to be a plot developing, but the characters were vile and the circumstances worse. How this things has won accolades is beyond me. ( )

Best book I've read in quite a few months. Gorgeously and disturbingly written. Probably not suitable for it's ?intended? demographic (teens) but I'm not going to dock the rating for that. Just absolutely wonderful. I don't want to go into details since 1) it's a difficult book to explain and 2) I don't want to ruin /anything/.

The author probably puts it best. It's a fairy tale about syphilis. STILL NOT HELPFUL? READ IT. ( )

I have a tag on my tumblr that might be said to represent a core part of my overall favourite things: "beautiful and terrible". It applies to this book. It applies so strongly to this book that I am wondering if there can be too much of a good thing.

In an end note, the author describes this book as "a fairytale about syphilis" which is also pretty damn accurate. The book is lush and very nearly baroque in everything from its outward appearance (my version has red-edged pages and beautifully patterned black title pages) to its lines of prose. It's a novel made of pieces - some narrated by its two key characters, others feeling almost like found objects in a collection - and each works with its fellows to build a whole of beauty and danger and almost feverish possibility. A world where hundred-year naps from thorn-prick seem entirely possible, but one built also of ruthless reality.

It's especially a world where to be poor, to be a woman, to be unfortunate, even just to be human means to be caught in the spinning current of history, of circumstances, and of the plans of others. It is a struggling bramble patch of a novel, a desperate scramble to avoid death by drowning.

It is most certainly not a novel of driving plot and page-turning action, but it was a beautiful and interesting experience. One I'm glad to have had and that will linger in the mind for a good long while. ( )

This book was horrible. I got about 200 pages in before I gave up. There were no redeeming qualities to this book. It was just gross and lame, and the story was dry and there were SO MANY TYPOS.
I never DNF books, so that will tell you how HORRIBLE this book was. ( )