*no rating*

OMG I have never read about such shallow characters.... I'm astonished.

I'm not a person to DNF but honestly I can't do this knowing what's coming my way...

I'll just skim the last chapter to get closure and won't be rating this furthermore.

P.S. Bobby, I hate you!!! You're despicable.

"Are you really so stupid? Bobby is all about being the best: the best looking, the best lover, the best cocksucker, the best power bottom, the most wanted.

He would take Kevin - or any man - away from you in a heartbeat if he thought he had the chance, if he thought it gave him some kind of crazy edge, boosted his self-esteem a little more.

I have so many issues with this. The rampant misogyny, of course. The fact that, personally, I find the whole espionage reason d'etre detestable. And generally, the part where this was not the story I was expecting.

Let's say I waive away the misogyny with a bit of dark amusement (passing the middle-point, I just wanted Vesper to stick it to Bond; and then there is the line "sweet tang of rape" that should be killed with fire, you can get some great examples under the spoiler tag), and take the spy tale on the hope that it'll be some fast action cheap-thrill. I did not get even that. I got a lot of card-playing, torture, and then a mess... I don't even know of what category, certainly not romantic, maybe melodrama. Hell,  I though it was already cheap that a woman couldn't be competent unless she was evil, but it was something (see, even lowering my standards to not be an angry female, what a waste), and then Vesper couldn't even rate to Femme-fatal. So no, there is no way to waive the misogyny. It's entrenched into the plot.

Someone could argue it's truer to the real world and the era, either the unexciting grimness or Bond's stance. I say fuck all that. Let us please have no more Vespers in real life, no more Bonds being glorified in fiction. Let us find other icons.

You can find some the shout-inducing bits here

No, no, nope. This one didn't do for me. It wasn't bad perse, I guess, but no. I was bored, and I was annoyed, and while I liked some elements, and kinda expected the ending... still no.
 
I think mostly it is that this volume, and the previous one, exacerbated a vague sense I had in the first install of lack of substance. I can't quite explain it, that feeling, but it was as if the story check-marked. Also, vol 2 and 3 was too scattered. It was necessary for the plot, and that's the thing: it felt forced (mcguffing retrieval, all of them, and amazingly serendipitous, which aligns with the "fate" thing the plot has going, but still sucks). The empress pov, while interesting, was totally pointless.

So, yeah, so not for me.

What. The. Fuck.

After two mostly passive, build up books, and we get hanged up there?

Well, that was melodramatic.

Because I quit a book last week, I forced myself to finish this one. I can finish anything on audio, thought I. I am not a quitter, thought I. But after struggling to focus on this and backtracking 2 hours because I realized I had been daydreaming the entire time, I have come to the realization that the DNF review is not so bad a thing.

This read was torturous.  I finished it but did not have a good time.

“You don’t love me. But you will.” 

Sorry Erik but no. No I won’t.  Feel free to keep trying.

“You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!” 

Hmmm, slightly tempting. But no. And here’s why:

This story has the lovely gothic trappings that one would expect; an opera “ghost” who hides in the shadows, a helpless damsel and loads of secret passageways and hidden rooms where ominous things happen.  But . . .

It was boring .There, I said it. It’s rather a dry read, goes off on tedious tangents about missing money for hours (felt like hours anyway) and the narration was a wee bit on the stuffy side, making it easy for me to doze off.  It also features a love triangle between Christine the beauty, Erik the mentally unstable phantom and Raoul a weepy, boy-man who dissolved into a fit of tears whenever he thought Christine might not share in his insta-love. Note to RaouL:  toughen up, man! Your tears are a perfectly good waste of suffering (thank you Clive Barker) and they are not attractive. Poor Christine. She would’ve been better off getting a dog than marrying either of these two.

This did not go down well for me. It was a struggle from beginning to end.  I was very much expecting to become immersed in the world but instead I couldn’t wait to flee from it.

“I am dying of love. “ Erik 

Ahhh,, too bad I wasn’t.