Wonderful

Oh, what a glorious book! Having read the Magister Ludi many moons ago, I was curious to see who had the audacity to try and build on it. Well, Bridget Collins didn't build, she flew off the turrets and took me on a glorious ride through a love story, mystery and tragedy, against a backdrop of a frightening, totalitarian, regime. It hovers, a lot, on emotional precipices: that conjure up all kinds of nightmares, or pushes you to remember intense first passions, then pokes fingers of sunlight through. It is also full of surprises and never lets on.
On a more practical level, it's a solid story following the relationship between 2 young men, competing for the highest honour at an elite school whose atmosphere is refined, high minded, monastic. This provides a pertinent contrast to all the human failings that are revealed and the flawed lives that weave in and out of each other.
There was one character, The Rat, that I really struggled with because I didn't know if she was meant to be an alter ego, past memory or, what? - it was quite irritating - but then all became clear. The narrators were astonishingly good. I will seek out more books by them. Bravo to everyone!

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It was confusing

This book was very slow going. It took me quite a while to understand what was going on. Overall I liked the characters once things picked up, but it was really hard to stick with it to the end. Not as good as The Binding

A Bit too Abstract for Me

I read The Binding before this book and thought it was great. Both books have the 'what is going on here' story but The Binding cleared some up part way through. I wanted this story to clear up regarding the 'Game' but it did not (at least to my satisfaction). The author references a book by Herman Hess that she was influenced by for this book but I am unfamiliar with it. Maybe the 'Game' would have been clearer to me if I had read that previously. That being said I still enjoyed the book and the interaction of the characters and was anxious to get back to the story each day.

Well......

This review is hard to write. Some of this book was great and yet, it just seemed too long for the story. I can always tell what I feel about a book, when I speed up the reading. This one got to a 1.5. Just sayin.

Different, but amazing.

I loved it. I thought I knew what was going to happen, but I didn't. And that's the kind of books I like.

Brilliant

This was one of the best books I’ve heard in quite a while. I had to keep going back to wherever I had lost the thread of the story because the plot moves forward and develops through a complicated series of events and I found myself losing the thread more often than usual, however, the plot twists, the character development and the tantalizing undercurrent of impending tragedy all together had me completely hooked. I loved it.