The Mask Game

A delightfully imaginative story full of intertwining sub-stories. It's greatest strength is definitely the unique ideas (people, animals, phenomena, etc.). ( )

This intertwining of a handful of stories is rather tripping, but kinda fun. I think a few things got lost in translation, but I loved the Red Bull scene. ( )

This is definitely a fantasy book, but you can see many jabs at humanity and bureaucracy. While it is definitely out there, I was drawn into the characters and how their story would finish. It did drag out a little bit too much at the end, but I was satisfied with the ending. ( )

An interesting take on a post-apocalyptic phantasmagoria, a society, socially similar to exaggerated ours, but with totally different physical possibilities. So all the "post-apocalyptic" stuff is "normal" there. Every chapter reads like a parable, and exposes new, quite fascinating details about the world. Usually, they come in a satirical wrapper, which reminds of Russian classics Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and modern Victor Pelevin. In this manner, chapters are very dense with information. Each chapter is dedicated mainly to one of the number of characters, whose life paths would eventually intersect. Unfortunately, the abundance of imagination does not allow characters do develop in a captivating way and the plot to stay fast enough to be interesting to follow. Sometimes, it seems, the author wants to speed things up, but it comes at the expense of style and depth. The beginning gave a lot of promise. I think that, if I finished the book, the final product would keep me satisfied, but 1/3 way through I had to stop, because it didn't give back the way I expected. ( )

The book was fairly well written with characters that were interconnected to make the story more interesting. The characters were also true to their personalities with not much changing them. It was very imaginative and I feel very original.

That being said.....

I hated this book. I would have stopped reading about 50 pages in but I promised to write a review and I can't do that without reading it all. There were just too many characters to try and keep track of and none that you really got to know. The story line was slow and made me want to throw my brand new kindle out the bus window. The creative and imaginative parts were hard for me to swallow because I tend to think logically. I tried to figure out how he wrote this book and how he came up with these ideas. The dentist bird, giants with six breasts, the barrels of punishment, the different diseases, none of them really made sense and I stopped trying to.

I would not recommend this book on anyone. ( )