Hello! I have been reading this book for awhile, so I am glad to finally start the review for Societe!
A novel portraying free will as mankind's bravest art. Christian Matters is a neurotic twenty-nine year old architect living in Chicago, USA. After a bizarre episode throws him off his morning routine, he abandons his promising career, girlfriend, and home for a life-changing journey to San Francisco, where he meets a cavalier aristocrat named Lester Rothschild and his beautifully extravagant love, fortepianist Ella Athens. Mysterious and insane, Lester takes Christian on his adventure to open Société, the most luxurious entertainment complex at the heart of the world's richest city. But, with the chance meeting of an unlikely visitor and the sudden death of a lover, colliding events lead Christian to unravel the true ambitions behind the greatly anticipated opening of Société, and discovers the fate of something much greater is at stake. In his modern and magically profound debut novel, Alexander Helas delivers a masterful, thought-provoking vision on the struggle of free will at the hands of society's quest for progress.
This book was okay, to be honest. The beginning is very slow and hard to get into and I don’t love the writing style. When I first started reading the book, one of my thoughts was: This is his first book. Not because it is bad, but because he has a lot of adjectives, trying to make his writing descriptive and easy to follow. The effect is actually overachieved and the adjectives can be overdone.
The chapters switch perspectives often which makes it difficult to follow because he uses characters we haven’t met yet, so our first thoughts of new characters are muddled and tainted. The perspective switch was also hard because it completely turned the story around so that as soon as one character got somewhere, the perspective changed and I had to start over again.
Rating: Borrow it. But, if you are the kind of person who likes to own books (like me!) the book is available for purchase here!
A novel portraying free will as mankind's bravest art. Christian Matters is a neurotic twenty-nine year old architect living in Chicago, USA. After a bizarre episode throws him off his morning routine, he abandons his promising career, girlfriend, and home for a life-changing journey to San Francisco, where he meets a cavalier aristocrat named Lester Rothschild and his beautifully extravagant love, fortepianist Ella Athens. Mysterious and insane, Lester takes Christian on his adventure to open Société, the most luxurious entertainment complex at the heart of the world's richest city. But, with the chance meeting of an unlikely visitor and the sudden death of a lover, colliding events lead Christian to unravel the true ambitions behind the greatly anticipated opening of Société, and discovers the fate of something much greater is at stake. In his modern and magically profound debut novel, Alexander Helas delivers a masterful, thought-provoking vision on the struggle of free will at the hands of society's quest for progress.
This book was okay, to be honest. The beginning is very slow and hard to get into and I don’t love the writing style. When I first started reading the book, one of my thoughts was: This is his first book. Not because it is bad, but because he has a lot of adjectives, trying to make his writing descriptive and easy to follow. The effect is actually overachieved and the adjectives can be overdone.
The chapters switch perspectives often which makes it difficult to follow because he uses characters we haven’t met yet, so our first thoughts of new characters are muddled and tainted. The perspective switch was also hard because it completely turned the story around so that as soon as one character got somewhere, the perspective changed and I had to start over again.
Rating: Borrow it. But, if you are the kind of person who likes to own books (like me!) the book is available for purchase here!