It took you a while to get into it, with the first few chapters jumping around through the timeline a bit. But once it picked up with the linear narrative, you couldn't put it down. For a plague novel, it only really dealt with the impact of the plague as opposed to any of the characters succumbing to it.
You found the plot twist of the main character, Camelot, a bit...underwhelming? It almost undermined the experiences of the other characters, making Camelot out to be a tourist, while for the others it was their whole world - life or death.

Really fucking beautiful.

Why is there so much incest, rape and pedophilia?

Weeeeeeird ass book…almost like some dudes self insert fan fiction about Aspasia…

Brilliant and unique perspectives on the Jesus story.

You struggled to get into this - the writing style is unusual. But once you wrapped your head around the beat of it, you found it quite beautiful.
There were occasional dry patches, but on the whole it was quite a poetic and lovely summary of Eleanor and Richard’s lives.

You loved Tom Curry as the narrator on this - but you were surprised at how silly it was. Basically 3 men go for a long walk in an underground tunnel for 60% of the story. The more fascinating concepts, like the fact that there are living dinosaurs and even early man living down below the earth are barely explored or engaged with before these idiots are literally blown up out of a volcano safely into Italy.
You found it quite…silly.

You didn’t enjoy this as much as “Cinderella is dead” but it had some similar vibes. The ending did feel rushed with a sort of “and then she fixed everything and always had the capacity to, just needed the circumstances to be this dire.”
Also, never really got a clear answer on Grandma’s motives since she seemed to give zero fucks about averting war, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯

You finished this book and kind of just stared into space for a hot minute going "Whaaaaaa" - ten points for all the unexpected twists and turns! But holy-lack-of-consequences Batman, what a message to embed in your novel.
"You can get away with anything if you're a straight white man - and women, even traumatised women will aid and abet you."

While no one breasted-boobily down the stairs, this was still very much a dude writing women. These women were basically men who happened to have women's bodies. They spoke, acted and reacted like men. Their anger and their grief was male. Also, their seemingly infinite wealth struck you as male.

What a very strange book.

…not sure if super anti-Jewish or not…

This book is very much infatuated with its own self - it wanks on and on about New York, as though everyone has been there and understands all the different places it talks about.
It jumps wildly between absurdist-whimsical humour and this forced poignant, life lessons Tuesdays with Maurie shit.
It jumps between time with no indication where or when you are.
It’s very hard to give a single fuck about the main character. Almost everyone in the book seems incredibly self involved.

Just really boring

Disjointed and hard to follow. Too many characters to keep track of.

You enjoyed this book, although at times struggled to keep track of the different characters and their motivations. You wanted to have more insight into the narrator's life as Cicero's slave, although you realised he was basically just a plot device. By the end though you weren't engaged enough to want to continue with the trilogy.

You really enjoyed this and finished it in about a day.

You liked that the eponymous tree didn’t make an appearance until halfway through the book and when it did it played a sort of Hopkins as Hannibal role - short, but memorable appearances.

The overall commentary on the role of women and the way the choose to wield what little power they have was well done.

You enjoyed this a lot. A light, fast paced read where you were never quite sure what was going to happen next. The footnotes got a little bit tedious, but overall the main character was weirdly endearing in a nihilistic way.

Took a really long time to get going and you struggled to get into it, even though you loved the concept.
The final third was really strong though and it wrapped up in a way that didn’t feel too trite.

Very predictable and very plodding to get there.

You enjoyed this as much as you always enjoy Kingfisher’s work. The plot was slightly hard to follow via audiobook - all the rules of the mirror world and the many discoveries and reveals.

Meh.

Maybe it was a mistake listening to the audiobook version of this, but the Aussie larakin who just wants to get along with everyone grated on every nerve you have by the end of the third chapter.

In your experience, any bloke who sounds like Fischer is usually complaining about Aboriginal people, his ex-wife and the do-gooders who want to stop live exports. They are not benevolent ex-billionaires with mysterious survivalist skills that are never really explained.

You enjoyed the world building elements of the book - the cults, the disappeared gods, the mysterious currency, etc. But for some reason the author's insistence on making everything as twee as possible undermined your ability to get really into it. So many "and then we all laughed and laughed and laughed until tears were pouring down our faces". And endless descriptions of cuddling and patting various animal companions who are mindlessly loyal to their ocker overlord.

You were really engaged with the mysteries of the world - the kingdom kidnapping the cultivators, the disappeared gods, the villagers who keep assuming Fischer is someone he isn't, etc. But the slog to get to the answers through some kind of Nice Guy Finishes First Fantasy novel is agonising.

You liked the smut but on the whole it took a very long time to get where it was going.

The main dude was regularly a complete and utter misogynistic a-hole and his redeeming qualities weren't really enough to make up for his fantasies of violently murdering the main woman on the regular.

The main woman was a highly competent engineer who could have done better and to be honest you spent the last chapter of the book hoping that she spends 6 months enjoying vigorous underwater delights with her mer-toy before ditching him for one of the bigger, better women of his species.

You always found wrestling incredibly homo-erotic - and you loved the Monstrous series by the same author. This should be such a winning combo!

Weirdly though something falls a little flat for you. Maybe it’s that the wrestling is secondary. Or maybe it’s that there’s no central conflict in the story - everything is basically fine the whole time and it’s just two dudes who have a whole lot of kinky sex.

It’s not un-enjoyable. It’s just not as compelling as you’d expected.

It’s a teddy bear that levels up while protecting his little girl - what’s not to love?

You were so excited when you first learned about this woman in history - you immediately looked up any books about her.
There two. This is the first one you read.

The format is weird, but most likely artistically significant. The chapters alternate between first and third person perspectives. The first person chapters are La Maupin on her deathbed, confessing to a monk. Weirdly though they tend to be the longer chapters and are waaaaay higher up the ladder of abstraction. They often repeat ideas multiple times. Lots of telling not showing. Which is disappointing because the third person chapters are really well done and paint wonderful scenes. You would have enjoyed it more if the majority of the book had been done more like that.

This is the one that stuck with you when you went through that period of reading all those historical fiction novels set around the same time - this is the one where the town decided to lock itself down so it won’t spread the plague any further than the town itself. Really compelling and based on an actual town that did this during the Black Death.

You didn’t mind this, but you struggled a LOT with the author’s choice to portray Diane as a complete innocent who has zero ulterior motives, and just happens to fall in love with a 14 year old boy who just happens to be a convenient meal ticket for her.
Like…come on!

This was meant to be a trashy, free audiobook to help me fall asleep and instead you ended up sitting up until the wee hours breaking your damn heart over the characters each time something went wrong!
It. Was. Meant. To. Be. Smut!!!!
Instead you lay there, wide eyed, clutching your pillow, nearly in tears just hoping they’d both be okay and be able to work through their trauma.

This is why you can’t have nice things, Sma - stop emotionally investing in your fap fodder!

I am in a grudge battle to the death with Freud.
I am determined to finish this damned book if it kills me - but at this stage I’m unsure which way it will go.

The whole thing feels like Stone got his hands on every single document Freud ever wrote - every letter, every grocery list, every restaurant review - and was determined to shoehorn every single one of them into this book in the name of accuracy.
So by a third of the way through, Freud still isn’t practicing psychology he’s just going on and on about how lovely the architecture in Vienna is and how much he hates being poor and wants to be married already.

I’m beginning to wonder if the book itself is not some kind of psychological experiment in resilience of the human spirit.

You picked it up because you wanted to learn about the earliest theories on sexual perversions, paraphilias, etc and the views on hysteria. Wanted to hear from Freud how he defined the Oedipus complex.
You’re now halfway through and he’s only just starting to consider human sexuality as a subject.

You know more about the layout of Vienna than you ever wanted to. You are more familiar with the internal structure of Viennese apartments than you anticipated being. You know more about how Viennese food compares to German fare than can ever be useful.

What IS this book?!

Utterly fascinating - you loved the content covering paraphilias and pre-historic psychopathy!