Hurray, I'm done.

I listened to this as an audiobook and fairly quickly came to the conclusion that I'm not really intellectual enough to get all the name dropping. Nor do I speak French at all, so there were a couple of paragraphs where something was quoted at length in French. I don't know about an actual paper edition, but the audiobook didn't offer anything in terms of translation. There was also at least one bit where it was in German instead of French, but the narrator's accent was a bit... I do know some German, but I couldn't actually identify this as being German until it was said that it was. Then again, this was the sort of narrator who also pronounces the word 'mirror' as thought it was spelled 'mirrrr', so there you are. But that's mostly to do with the audiobook recording.

The bit about me not being intellectual enough still stands, though. Seven hundred thousand artists, musicians, poets, what have yous that I've never heard about, some of which may or may not be fictional. A world of meh to all this pretentious look-how-smart-I-am-ing.

Nor am I sufficiently interested in blow by blow instructions for how to cook this or that meal or how to make paper or how to make a drawing or how to pick locks or how to have sex or how to play a board game complete with all the dice rolls and which square their piece lands on or what everybody is wearing at any given time or every single item they bought at the grocery shop or what supporting characters had for breakfast or what kind of irrelevant dream they had at night in gory detail or what kind of medicine they take and how much or random notes a character made on random scraps of paper. For me, it did not add atmosphere or enrich the story with details or anything of the sort. It just made me bored. And irritated. If I had been involved in the editing process (I'm not an editor) I would have adviced the author to try and curb this need for miniscule detail. Just a bit. Just enough so it didn't make it sound like she was being paid per word.

The primary problem I had with this book, however, was the fact that I found it very difficult to like the characters. Clare is a doormat who puts up with pretty much anything, spends her entire life tethered to Henry and as a consequence never really makes her own decisions about anything at all. Henry has basically told her that she can't anyway, so why bother? Everything she does is rooted in what Henry has told her about her future. Henry comes across as some kind of borderline sociopath, grooming Clare from an early age while hiding behind 'it has already happened in a way sort of can't change it'. Well, maybe he can't, but then nor does he seem to care much. It serves his own ends after all. Not to mention the casual violence. The mugging of people. Breaking into places. Stealing with arms and legs. I get that he probably needs to in order to survive when time travelling. That's not my problem. My problem is that he enjoys doing it, as though mugging someone is just a minor inconvenience for the victim. It's mentioned a time or two that he's been arrested numerous times, but have escaped the consequences by time travelling. How convenient that he never at any time has to take any sort of responsibility for anything at all. The victims are all just extras anyway, so who cares? Except of course one particular person who was threatened with murder, tied to a tree, and then casually kicked in the groin (which could actually have permanently damaged the equipment, thus adding maiming to the list). Granted, that particular person wasn't the nicest guy around, but still. Murder threats. Casual violence. No consequences to Henry or Clare, because they are the main characters so obviously above the law here. They make their own law and others applaud them for it. I very nearly stopped listening at that point.

I think probably I could have liked the story a lot better if the characters hadn't all been so unlikable.