The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

by Steven Brust

I thought this book would be really interesting. I was wrong.

Alright, well, that doesn’t capture all of it. The story was told in a very unique manner, I liked hearing about the narrator’s artistic creative process, and interspersed in the plot was a Hungarian folk tale. So maybe you can see why I thought it would be interesting. Unfortunately, I never liked the narrator — he was every bit as cocky as the other characters claimed — and the folk tale was included just for the sake of including a Hungarian folk tale. I didn’t see a real connection. The straw that broke the camel’s back, though, was that the whole book was spent talking about this painting the narrator was working on, and we never got to see a picture of it. It was described in so much detail that I was sure the author would have gotten someone to actually paint it for him. Forget the reader’s imagination, sometimes you just need to show the reader what you mean. And this was one of those times.

Maybe I’m just not artistic enough to have enjoyed the book. Y’all are welcome to it.