politerobot

[DISCLAIMER: As with the Canetti-book, the rating reflects my reading experience, not the quality of the work.]

Since the new year is approaching fast, I have decided to become much stricter with my reading habits. It used to be that I had to finish books no matter how dull or hard I might find reading them - NO MORE. Thus I am putting away several of the books that have just been languishing for months, where I only manage to read a few pages at a time before getting bored.

Flora Segunda was, I am sorry to say, one of these books. I started it in October, wildly excited about it, because from the title I was sort of hoping for a Harry Potter-esque reading experience. I was disappointed.

Flora Segunda is ... a strange book. I have no other words for it. Its world building, characters and happenings are very strange, and while I tend to like that - truly original genre work is sort of hard to find - it fell flat in this case.

I had a much too difficult time trying to keep track of all the characters, places, names and customs to actually enjoy the reading. I never managed to get immersed in the world, which is a bad sign in a fantasy book for me. I want to be whisked away to strange lands, not be painfully aware that I am reading about constructed strange lands!

The plot also seemed very scattered. When I felt like the book was going in one direction, it suddenly weered off in another. Maybe I didn't hold out long enough for the proper plot to gather up steam and get going, but I really didn't feel like finishing the book. It was sitting on my Kindle taunting me.

But; the characters are (for the most part) strong, original and interesting. The world is very different and original. It's just that the execution of the whole thing was confusing and mangled, and I didn't enjoy it.

Maybe I'll finish it some other time, or pick up another book by Wilce in the future (because I feel like she has all the right ideas about how fantasy should and could be written), but for now, I'll put it away.