“To know a story is to stroke the silken surface of loss, to feel the weight of beauty in his hands. To know a story is to carry it always, etched in his bones, even if dormant for decades. Tell us, they insist. To tell a story, he realises, is to plant a seed and let it grow.”
“Time is rushing, rushing forward. All is growth, hurtling through the days, unfurling a riot of colour and scent, an acceleration of seasons. Wait, she wants to call out. Wait. There is something in her that wants to stay the coming of the light. She yearns to hold the darkness, the stillness, a little longer.”
Beautifully written. The author seamlessly pushes the story through many years and yet you still felt completely connected to the characters. She does not shy away from showing just how much war destroys a country and the citizens within it but never once did it feel sensationalized. Heartbreaking but leaves you with a bittersweet feeling. The book’s only downfall is that it lost steam in the last quarter and I don’t think every truly regained it.
But maybe this is how broken people keep living. They find someone as broken, fit them into the empty spaces of their hearts and, together, grow something different.
Memory is a strange thing, vicious. The more one wants to forget, the more one can’t help but remember. It is like a rat chewing at the skin, slowly and painfully–impossible to ignore.
This book took awhile for me to sink into it. The slow pacing sometimes hindered my interest and other times did a great job building the tension that the story needed. I didn’t know the story of Clytemnestra before reading, and I found her to be an extremely compelling character. She is angry and unafraid of that anger. She does not shy away from the ugly parts of herself. While I think the book did an good job portraying grief and the feelings of vengeance that springs from it, I found the climax to be slightly, well, anticlimactic. A very good book, but not an amazing one.
The world was endlessly fascinating and fun to watch the characters explore. Unfortunately, the story was bogged down by flat characters, a forced, terribly developed romance, and writing that made a half-assed attempt to be atmospheric but missed the mark by a mile.
