This is the sort of book that sits with you and forgets to leave, and at some point you turn around from whatever you're doing and realize you're still thinking about it.

It's a ruminative story, with a slowly building story. Big stuff happens, but it unspools rather than explodes, and the protagonist, Jevick, doesn't carry the day and save the kingdom: he is a heartbeat in a grander political and religious conflict. I'd say A Stranger in Olondria is demonstrative of the ongoing erosion between the barriers of genre (which I'm defining right now by pulp conventions, rapid plot, etc) and literary (which I'm defining as prose- and character-motivated) work. The heart of the story is the main character's personal transformation.

Also, there are ghosts and lyric poetry. Unlike the poetry in nearly any other novel I've read, it's beautiful and moves the story.
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recenzie pe larg https://bloguldesefe.ro/2021/05/15/prins-intre-credinta-si-ratiune-un-strain-in-... ( )

This is a hard book to review. On just the prose itself, it's a 4 or 5 stars. This book is gorgeous. The language is lovely and musical. Plot wise, it was again, high - there was a good premise. For actual execution, however, probably a 2. Gorgeous language, unfortunately, just does not make up for very slow and uneven pacing.

The first half of the book was Jevick learning about Olondria, the land of books and writing, and then actually going there himself after his father's death. He spends much of his time as a loafer and playboy, enjoying food, books, and women. This section was arguably the slowest portion of the book. Things pick up slightly with the appearance of Jissavet's ghost, though it isn't until Jevick falls in with the Priestess of Avalei that I started really getting into the story.

Another thing that kept bugging me was that I did not like either Jevick or Jissavet. Jevick, despite being the protagonist, did not exhibit much agency and was instead solely an agent of the plot. He largely allowed others to determine his fate and it wasn't until toward the end of the story that he made decisions for himself, which to the credit of the development of the character, were selfless. Jissavet was a brat, and I think she was fully aware of that. She acknowledges she had no respect or understanding for her mother and thought herself above her mother. Whether that was just an aspect of her personality or a manifestation of her kyitna was a bit unclear, but either way, I had very little sympathy for her in life or in death, where she essentially bullied Jevick to get her way.

At the end, I finally understood this was a book about the power of books and writing and learning.

A Stranger in Olondria is not written in an easy-to-read manner, deliberately, I think. It mimics some of the classics of previous generations, with rambling prose that is hard to follow for someone (read: me) accustomed the straight-forwardness of contemporary publishing. Which makes me realize it's been a very long time since I sat down with Lord Dunsany or Tolkien and gotten immersed in the prose, focusing on the language rather than the plot. The speculative fiction genre seems to have forgotten its roots, and Sofia Samatar appears to be trying to revitalize a love and appreciation for language in the genre. ( )

DNF at 29%

This seemed interesting at first, but I couldn't get attached to the main character, which is the only one with a bit of a personality, and the long descriptions and excerpts of books the main character was reading made me really really bored.
It might work for someone that is looking for an atmospheric book centered on a main character with a love for a specific city and poems, but it didn't work for me.

Hard to describe this book. It is dense but not because it is in love with its own prose. It is full of setting but not in a self-conscious or self-indulgent way. It has a fully realized new world, but it's not precious--it feels real, with how characters react to and act in the landscape and the history and politics and culture. The plot does not go in a predictable direction but feels inevitable. There are action-filled scenes but is is also a story of inner life. It carries its own spell. ( )