Never before in my life, have I ever read a book that talked so incredibly much, without saying anything at all.

I picked up this book because I kept hearing good things about it, and because I came across reviews that compared it to another couple of books that I have enjoyed. So I decided to give it a try. What a mistake. One review I read recently, said something about a 500-something page book feeling like thousands of pages. That is so true.

About 80% of the book is empty, pointless, over the top descriptions. So so many words in such pretentious language, meaning to sound all deep and meaningful, and in the end communicating absolutely nothing of value. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed my share of well written books that feel more like paintings. This just wasn’t one of them, there was no beauty, just words upon words upon words.

And then there was all those brackets. Right in the middle of all those run on descriptions, there were brackets injecting other run on descriptions. About 3 times on each page.

As for the actual story of the book, well…. there is one. A very weak one. It’s a fairy tale that, I think, is meant to be some kind of metaphor for life, or some such. But it’s just a very bland story in the end. The whole tale could have been told in about 20 pages. And yet there were 538. The gosh darned book took me forever to read, because I simply had no interest in reading it and I kept reading other books in between. It really did feel like thousands of pages.

So I guess it’s clear that I don’t recommend the book. If you happen to have a somewhat similar taste to mine, it’ll be torture and a huge waste of your time.