Overview: 3.5/5 stars
This book talks about difficult themes in the history of Africa and then US, centered around discrimination and exploitation. The book follows a variety if people along the last three centuries that dealt with various elements of discrimination, with slavery being a central theme.
While the topic in interesting, the writing style felt mostly flat to me. The characters were human, but it felt most of them were objects of their own lives instead of subjects. It seems they suffered not only from the outside world but also a lack of inner development. That was true not only of the characters that had limited to no agency, but also of the ones that had freedom and took revolutionary actions: they all felt limited and fairly unengaging.
From the more academic perspective, it gives glimpses of philosophical debates in the history of African Americans. This was the but I personally enjoyed the most.
All in all, an okay book about an interesting and well-researched topic.
By this I mean, a book you had to brace yourself to read, and you feel proud for having read. Did you enjoy the process of reading it?
Is it interesting characters? Or believable motivations? Maybe writing style? Is the world building?
And how likely are you to enjoy a book that doesn’t fit your own criteria?
A bit criticism to the Silmarillion is that the style is very dry and the plot is disconnected.
This is by design. The Silmarillion wanted to be the creating work of the UK mythology. As such, it mimicked the style of other mythological sagas: the Mabinogion most notably, the minor Homer, the Eddas. Part of the idea is to create a shared well-know scene from which other authors can draw to set their own works.
In some ways, it was incredibly successful: nowadays it’s impossible to talk about Elfs without referencing Tolkien’s in some ways.
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