Ramblings of a Bibliophile

Amazon.com review:

Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it--you can fumble with a plot summary but you won't be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story--whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true "enchanter" of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold." At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie's 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. --Daphne Durham

Genre: Fiction, Historical-Fiction, Fantasy

My Rating: 0 ; Did Not Finish

This was anything but satisfying. One of the reviews on the back cover calls it "A baroque whirlwind of a narrative..." And the keyword being, whirlwind.

I just...couldn't get into it. Whoever wrote the synopsis did a wonderful job at simplifying a story that isn't simple at all. I felt like I would have needed multiple diagrams and a map just to get through it. Either my head wasn't in it, or it just isn't any good, but I honestly wasn't sticking around long enough to find out.

This is the first time I have never not finished a book after starting it, so a piece of me feels that I should try again in the future. The very distant future of course, but we shall see. :x