I wanted to finish the book, I wanted to like it. I've never read Dostoevsky before and have had this book on my shelf for years. Well, I tried it...but when the hell was it going to get anywhere?

Now the characters, as far as i could tell, were very distinct and had a lot to them. He spends a lot of time setting up his characters and their backstories so we can understand where they are coming from and all...

And then he jumps into some theological discussion between them that slows things down. I hoped this would be a great book to give me some insight into Russian Orthodoxy and life under it before the revolution, but nope. It practically tried to cram some things down my throat that had very little context.

If I hadn't read the introduction thoroughly before tackling this book, there's no way I would've gotten as far as I did.

So there's a character setup, and then it's "okay, let's take most of a chapter to discuss this bit of theology or injustice." The common rule of writing most of us grew up with and got knocked into our heads was "show, don't tell." This feels more like a case of "gotcha" and back to characters discussing things instead of doing them.

I bet if I went a bit longer, the book would've gotten better...but I've lost my patience with it. I get that Dostoevsky, as a novelist, was probably writing his heart out about all the things he hoped for and his beliefs and philosophies (and using his characters as foils so as to get past any censorship or trouble with the church), but it was just too much. I could only wait so long for the plot to pick up, and I was confused with what little I'd already received (and the fact that some characters are referred to by different names, so watch out--print a cheat sheet of characters if you need to).

I'll give him another shot in the future with "Crime and Punishment," but I'm donating this one.