Paul reviewed Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta
If you like letter books, you might like this. If you don't, you won't.
2 stars
This book is okay - hence the 2/5 rating - but two things let it down for me:
- The first person diary perspective means you don't really hear much from the other characters, including Vivian and Sol.
- I'm not a fan of novels that are a series of letters (c.f. The Appeal, This is How You Lose the Time War). I don't think this works as a way of telling a story, and you end up with 10% of the book taken up with the metadata about when the letter was sent, who by, what encryption level was used (which is totally irrelevant).
I don't agree that it's a 'gripping sci-fi mystery' - there's very little mystery and not much of a reveal at the end (which is predictable about half-way through the book). Likewise it's not an 'eco-thriller', given that we don't even meet most of the people behind …
This book is okay - hence the 2/5 rating - but two things let it down for me:
- The first person diary perspective means you don't really hear much from the other characters, including Vivian and Sol.
- I'm not a fan of novels that are a series of letters (c.f. The Appeal, This is How You Lose the Time War). I don't think this works as a way of telling a story, and you end up with 10% of the book taken up with the metadata about when the letter was sent, who by, what encryption level was used (which is totally irrelevant).
I don't agree that it's a 'gripping sci-fi mystery' - there's very little mystery and not much of a reveal at the end (which is predictable about half-way through the book). Likewise it's not an 'eco-thriller', given that we don't even meet most of the people behind the ecological group.
I've noticed that a lot of the 4 and 5 star reviews are in Finnish, so perhaps something is lost in the English translation.