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A review by thewallflower00
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
4.0
So imagine if you combined Agatha Christie with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (or “Groundhog’s Day” if you’re not a video game connoisseur). An unusual combination I know, but that’s definitely the best comparison I can make. The problem is that I don’t like Agatha Christie and Majora’s Mask was an overrated game. This came across my radar after a recommendation by Justin McElroy (of My Brother My Brother and Me podcasting fame)
There’s a big high society party in a mansion (imagine The Great Gatsby) where there’re lots of colorful characters and they all have their reasons to kill one another. Our main character, who has amnesia, inhabits one of these bodies throughout the day. But he gets to do it eight times. So at any given instance, there’s eight of him but they all have different levels of knowledge about the goings-on. When he dies or falls asleep, he goes into another body and repeats the day, needing to use what he’s learned from before. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to figure out who killed the daughter of the mansion’s owner.
It’s long and I got very confused throughout. I am not a guy who can figure out a book mystery. Between all the red herrings, false leads, and characters, I can barely hang on to the plot. Now add time travel into the mix. Maybe I’m an unsophisticated idiot, but it’s too challenging to keep track of who’s in what body where at what time and what that person knows. I’m sure the author spent a long time figuring out the exact timeline of all events and an even harder time making a book out of all that. Kudos for that, but a reader needs a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and get everything out of it the author intended. It’s like a very intricate clock or 80-hour video game. The other problem is all the characters are pretty despicable. If you like character-driven pieces, this is not for you. This is more like a puzzle box.
But I did finish it, so it was entertaining enough, but I could not tell you what was happening. This is a hard read, not for the beach. It’s on the level of The Magicians by Lev Grossman or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
There’s a big high society party in a mansion (imagine The Great Gatsby) where there’re lots of colorful characters and they all have their reasons to kill one another. Our main character, who has amnesia, inhabits one of these bodies throughout the day. But he gets to do it eight times. So at any given instance, there’s eight of him but they all have different levels of knowledge about the goings-on. When he dies or falls asleep, he goes into another body and repeats the day, needing to use what he’s learned from before. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to figure out who killed the daughter of the mansion’s owner.
It’s long and I got very confused throughout. I am not a guy who can figure out a book mystery. Between all the red herrings, false leads, and characters, I can barely hang on to the plot. Now add time travel into the mix. Maybe I’m an unsophisticated idiot, but it’s too challenging to keep track of who’s in what body where at what time and what that person knows. I’m sure the author spent a long time figuring out the exact timeline of all events and an even harder time making a book out of all that. Kudos for that, but a reader needs a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and get everything out of it the author intended. It’s like a very intricate clock or 80-hour video game. The other problem is all the characters are pretty despicable. If you like character-driven pieces, this is not for you. This is more like a puzzle box.
But I did finish it, so it was entertaining enough, but I could not tell you what was happening. This is a hard read, not for the beach. It’s on the level of The Magicians by Lev Grossman or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.