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El Reino de Este Mundo [2/2]
Posted by: | February 1, 2010 | Comments Off on El Reino de Este Mundo [2/2]
Overall verdict: very interesting book. As I’m sure I’ve said every blog, I wish I understood more of the nitty gritty details [via Spanish vocab/adjs/etc] so that I could better appreciate the book, but from what I understand – I definitely would love to read this again (maybe in English?)
That being said, there were a few things I quite enjoyed. Above all, I felt that everything came full circle in the plot. For example, Ti Noel left his homeland, and eventually ended up back there to essentially start over. Evil rulers were overthrown and new ones replaced them. The fungus that Ti Noel was obsessed with in the first place and used to start the revolution ended up psuedo-creating (one of) his new homes/cities. No matter what, the most interesting of all was that regardless of race, city, circumstance, there was always someone who was greedy for power and willing to actually kill anyone in the way of it. I feel like that idea reflects a lot upon the society of today, mainly because power over people doesn’t discriminate. Also – I found it intriguing that there was no strict implication of religion (which I may have entirely missed, feel free to correct me). It seemed like ‘lo maravilloso’ and all the beliefs associated with it was the religion of the slaves, but I never really found a direct statement that the whites were christian or some specific religion.
Just a few things I found kinda.. off: I felt there was some kind of discontinuity in the story. Henri went from working in a kitchen to king, Ti Noel kind of drifted in and out of stories either as a freed man or as a slave, and it seemed like there were a few tangents on related people (ie – Paulina) to the plot – but it kinda lost me as to how it all directly affected Ti Noel (who is the one telling the story, right?). I could be entirely wrong, but I did get lost a couple times and kept flipping back pages and re-reading, trying to figure out what happened and where people kept getting lost!
All in all, intriguing read. Though – poor Ti Noel, the guy could never catch a break! Discussion tomorrow shall be an interesting one!
