The Luminaries

For me this didn't live up to my expectations. I guess I should stop being allured by Man-Booker prize winners, they run so hot and cold. I can't fault the appeal of this book - a Kiwi author, set in a fascinating time period - the 1860s gold rush of the Otago goldfields (in the south of New Zealand), and on the West Coast of the South Island. It is a spectacular setting.

It is hard to put together a critique of this book without touching on some events and characters in this book, so to be fair to those who intend to read it, I have slapped most of this review into a spoiler. It is too hard to tiptoe around the story...

There are a number of things that annoyed me with this book, and surprisingly, the 830 page length is not one of them. I have no issue with a long book, if the story is worth the pages. However in a book this long, in a setting this good, I have an expectation of some excellent descriptive writing. I want atmosphere, I want to understand the setting from the writing (and not just from prior knowledge), I want the writing to evoke the setting. Unfortunately, this book offered practically nothing on this front. It was so tied up in the people, their interactions and their relationships, that the description was minimal, and focused mostly on the people, at the expense of the setting and the scenery, which in my view was a shame. There is so much to offer here - Hokitika as a gold mining town, the savage and spectacular Hokitika Harbour, the Maori land (of the time), the harsh climate, the hard work of a gold claim. So much opportunity gone begging.

The second problem I have is with the astrological gimmickry - and in my view it is gimmickry. The sections of the book follow a structure such that each chapter is approximately half the number of pages as the subsequent (first 360 pages, second 160- pages etc), assumed to be mimicking the phases of the moon, or a method to indicate a speeding up of the story/events. Each chapter title is also astrological in nature - examples: Sun in Capricorn; Moon in Taurus, Waxing; Saturn in Libra... etc At the front of the book the principle characters are attributed astrological signs, and other characters are attributed planetary influences. This ties through the whole story, but, it takes a significant amount of referring back to the list, and even so seems to contribute little extra to the narrative? I found the whole thing felt unnecessary.My second to last item on my complaint list - are the chapter headlines. For the first few chapters (say 600 pages) this isn't such a bit deal - one short sentence hinting at the contents. This is common enough is older books - it sort of annoys me in them too... However, once we get into the last few hundred pages, as the chapters become shorter and shorter the chapter headlines conversely become longer and longer. It reaches the peak-ridiculousness when the chapter title is longer than the chapter. Worse though, is the fact that the chapter titles begin adding information not found in the narrative - eg the chapter title reads "In which..." and outlines a sequence of events which are not covered by the chapter. To me this was just illustrating that the book couldn't conform to its own structure.Last complaint on the list gets a spoiler within the spoiler - even if you think you might read this book, just skip this one... I was annoyed by the magical realism. It wasn't advertised, and while I have read a few novels which are based on magical realism, I don't like to be surprised with it. OK call it Astral Twinning if you will, but for me I consider it a cheat after setting up the complex web of characters.
Ok, there were some positives, as I probably would have ditched it half way through if it were 2 stars - there are just too many other books I would read.

The complex web of characters are excellent, and would have taken a lot of planning, as it all seems to tie together pretty faultlessly. As a mystery, it was well crafted and complex, although the non-linear structure to release the information was annoying, the initial chapter where the majority of the characters are in a room together sharing their knowledge is an interesting and successful way of dumping the layer of initial information.

For me, it was a 3 star read.