Hard To Be A God
Buy Now
By using these links, you support READO. We receive an affiliate commission without any additional costs to you.
Description
Book Information
Posts
To review this book in one word, I would use 'Inscrutable'. I almost feel like I have no business writing this review since I understand the book so little - but then again, the onus in on the text to impart understanding, not on me to wrangle it out. On the other hand, I may have fallen victim to a bad translation, and I feel like the time and culture differences between when and where the book was written and myself played a part. The main text is written as a stream-of-consciousness from the internal point of view of the main character, and seems addicted to going off on unnecessary, long-winded, and confusing tangents about absolutely anything and everything. It is very, very difficult to pin down what the 'point' of any given paragraph is, or what it's relevance to the story may be. The plot, if there is one (The blurb suggests one, but in the actual book i'm not convinced) is so obfuscated by these tangents i legitimately had no idea what was going on, who characters were, what their relevance to each other was, until the last few chapters of the book - the 'climax' - which still made no sense, but at least seemed to be happening. The PoV character is the only 'character' in the book, the rest being very poorly developed. The main antagonist, a Fascist Dictator organising a coup in a medieval kingdom (I think that's what was happening?) seemed to have no personality beyond 'bad guy', while the token love interest had no personality beyond 'child-like innocence.' In one memorable, early-chapter scene, the main character goes on a long tangent about how the bad guy wasn't really that bad anyway, because he wasn't as bad as Hitler, and he was incompetent anyway. Okay? I guess? Not exactly compelling storytelling - imagine if Luke turned up to Yoda and Yoda said Darth Vader wasn't a problem because he was incompetent and not as bad as Hitler, so Luke didn't really need to train anyway. Right, so is that the end of the story? I honestly was able to peace together more of the plot and themes of the books from the extensive afterword by the authors, mostly dedicated to reprinting letters they wrote each other while writing the book, as well as the forward which heavily contextualised the era in which it was written. Honestly, I just find this book baffling. And yet, I still finished reading it, so it's not as bad as others. This next point is a Major spoiler, but I didn't want to not mention it, because it is so absolutely characteristic of my experience in the book. Throughout the book, the main antagonist uses 'Grays' - secret police - to persecute literates and solidify his power, but the 'twist' in the end is that the main antagonist organises a religious-based counter-coup against his first coup ... for some reason? This is supposed to be the 'climax', the 'big reveal' and yet it makes absolutely no sense, and is never explained -- and then ultimately, has no impact on the end of the book, since the main character does exactly what he was going to do before it happened, and exactly what he said he was going to do at the start of the book. As I said, Inscrutable.
Description
Book Information
Posts
To review this book in one word, I would use 'Inscrutable'. I almost feel like I have no business writing this review since I understand the book so little - but then again, the onus in on the text to impart understanding, not on me to wrangle it out. On the other hand, I may have fallen victim to a bad translation, and I feel like the time and culture differences between when and where the book was written and myself played a part. The main text is written as a stream-of-consciousness from the internal point of view of the main character, and seems addicted to going off on unnecessary, long-winded, and confusing tangents about absolutely anything and everything. It is very, very difficult to pin down what the 'point' of any given paragraph is, or what it's relevance to the story may be. The plot, if there is one (The blurb suggests one, but in the actual book i'm not convinced) is so obfuscated by these tangents i legitimately had no idea what was going on, who characters were, what their relevance to each other was, until the last few chapters of the book - the 'climax' - which still made no sense, but at least seemed to be happening. The PoV character is the only 'character' in the book, the rest being very poorly developed. The main antagonist, a Fascist Dictator organising a coup in a medieval kingdom (I think that's what was happening?) seemed to have no personality beyond 'bad guy', while the token love interest had no personality beyond 'child-like innocence.' In one memorable, early-chapter scene, the main character goes on a long tangent about how the bad guy wasn't really that bad anyway, because he wasn't as bad as Hitler, and he was incompetent anyway. Okay? I guess? Not exactly compelling storytelling - imagine if Luke turned up to Yoda and Yoda said Darth Vader wasn't a problem because he was incompetent and not as bad as Hitler, so Luke didn't really need to train anyway. Right, so is that the end of the story? I honestly was able to peace together more of the plot and themes of the books from the extensive afterword by the authors, mostly dedicated to reprinting letters they wrote each other while writing the book, as well as the forward which heavily contextualised the era in which it was written. Honestly, I just find this book baffling. And yet, I still finished reading it, so it's not as bad as others. This next point is a Major spoiler, but I didn't want to not mention it, because it is so absolutely characteristic of my experience in the book. Throughout the book, the main antagonist uses 'Grays' - secret police - to persecute literates and solidify his power, but the 'twist' in the end is that the main antagonist organises a religious-based counter-coup against his first coup ... for some reason? This is supposed to be the 'climax', the 'big reveal' and yet it makes absolutely no sense, and is never explained -- and then ultimately, has no impact on the end of the book, since the main character does exactly what he was going to do before it happened, and exactly what he said he was going to do at the start of the book. As I said, Inscrutable.