Cardos Otero Otero itibaren Limoeiro do Ajuru
I enjoyed this book enough to recommend it to several people, however, it is not perfect. I wanted the author to include either a little more of the supernatural or a little less. I kept hoping that Allen would delve a little deeper into the past and into the origins of the "magic man." I wanted this book to be about 100 pages longer. Overall, however, it was a lovely book. I will definitely keep reading this author's works.
No joke, it took me FOUR TRIES and TWO YEARS to read this book - every time I had some spare reading time, I'd promise myself I'd get into it, but I would always peter out halfway through and wish I was reading Dante instead. But I finally, finally finished, and was pleasantly surprised - apparently had I pushed through and got to the back third I would have been able to finish, because it really does pick up at the end, but I'm not sure if that can make up for the incredibly slow moving first half+.
It has been a very long time since I read this book when I was in high school. My criticism of it then was that it was that the conflicts seemed petty and the female characters seemed week. I was told that the reason I didn't like it was that I couldn't understand it because I was a boy. If I accepted that statement at all it would be the worst criticism of Austen's work I could give. I do find her books very well written but I see her and Henry James as leading the way to contemporary literature's abandonment of anything good or great for the cultural and psychological truth. Now it seems that if a book has a single character who is wholly sympathetic it is considered fluff, while a Kundera or McEwan with their pageant of flawed and despicable characters are critically acclaimed.