Sunday, July 14, 2019

2019 book 85

Jo Walton's Lent
I generally like Walton's books a lot, and was intrigued by descriptions of her latest, about a real historical priest guy in fifteenth century Florence, dealing with politics and whatnot, who discovers sometime about himself that changes everything. But the thing is, that twist doesn’t come until halfway through, so I had to read many, many pages of Catholic guys talking about Catholicism to get to that point (I almost abandoned this book more than once). The second half of the book was more interesting, and I thought the character work was really strong, but it too was steeped in Catholicism, and I just found it off-putting. The writing here is great, and Walton really brings Florence to life, I just think I’d have appreciated this more if I cared about Christianity and related philosophy. I’m Jewish, so I don't. B.

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