Murakamis opus magnum left me a bit confused behind. What else did I expect, tbh? Most of his works I read so far did not follow beaten paths. He prefers to go new paths in each of his works, like the natives of the Isle of Sakhalin ( a literary reference he mentions in the second part of the book).
And that is the reason, I don't have a clear opinion on what I just read. I can't compare it to other works because his work differs so much. As a human being, I usually do not have an own opinion on things. I live in my bubble and follow often the established thinking's. When you discover something unknown and your environment hasn't a clear opinion on it, we tend to don't like it. Building an own opinion based on the given objectives is really exhausting.
One of the things I really like about murakamis work, is his old fashioned use of recurring themes. References to Classical music and literature are mentioned many times throughout the book. From Chekhov to Janacek to c.c. Jung a wide range of references are made and embedded in his story line. These references never felt artificial to me and are the part of his works, I love most.

Murakami builds a new world in his books, referenced as year 1Q84, with magical everyday occurrences. He introduces very interesting characters that felt really unique to me. For instance, komatsu, the befriended editor of the main character tengo. I enjoyed each section with him. The story itself has so many fantastic ideas. I will not try to sum it up, because there are better ones who did that. In the end,I felt, like with Stephen king's the dark tower saga - that the building he created was too complex and that there was no real way to end the story by answering all upcoming questions without many questionmarks and contradictions. Instead he decided to end the story as a classical happy end love story without answering any questions. And, as I mentioned in the beginning. How to feel about this? Are we do used to the usual patterns we see in movies or faced in books before,that I can't appreciate this? Or has murakami just taken a convenient shortcut?

I will think about this story in the next days. Maybe this is the most achievement for an author anyway.