The pacing of this book was Tolkienesque, which is not a intended as a compliment. Much editing could have made this book a very good read. I still mostly enjoyed it, but the pacing for the first third was plodding and for the second third was deliberate and for the final third satisfactory. I did not grasp how the interludes of fictional correspondence between Edmund Burke and Edward Gibbon added to the tale. I believe that Carr meant this story as a kind of allegory and the correspondence was a device to develop that as an internal commentary, but I failed to grasp it—which may say more about me than about the book. I may have more easily pondered that if I had read the book as a text rather than in audiobook format. My conclusion was that Carr was making more general points on how civilizations fall, but took too long a time to get there.I enjoyed the historical aspects of ergotism and scarlet fever, but it was confused with a character's ability to communicate with animals to a degree that was unbelievable, which the fictional correspondence touches on but never explains. I expect the highly anthropomorphic treatment of the animal characters, which is jarring in a book that goes to great lengths to convince the reader that the work is a true history, meant to show the animals as a metaphor of some sort, which again I confess I failed to grasp.Carr attempted to present characters as multi-dimensional, but fell into stock characters outside of the Bane. The Bane were by far the most interesting and developed in the book, particularly Heldobah (since I didn't read it, I don't know the spellings). The characters of Broken were somewhat two-dimensional even if Arnhem retained some heroic appeal. The last three discs of the 30-disc set were notes of language and analysis of this fictional history and city of Broken. It was very detailed and clearly engaged much effort on the author's part. Interesting to skim in text, not interesting to have read to oneself, so I abandoned it eventually. Carr's has created a incredible world and story filled with well-written characters and conflicts that actually make sense within the overall plot. I truly enjoyed Keera's characters in particular, as well as Sixt's wife...a woman faced with conflicts in her family, a plague, and a determination to follow her own faith. The characters are believable in their roles, making their conflicts and interactions seem almost natural for the world in which they live. As they are focused with a plague that each group believes the other responsible for; the interactions between the Bane and the Tall change in response to every new discovery.However, as a whole, the book never caught my attention as well as I expected it too. I fought with myself to finish it, because of both the length and overly verbose sentences and prose throughout the work. I unfortunately found myself skimming through a few chapters during the almost seven hundred page length because I just couldn't keep focused. There are moments where the actually conflicts, plots, and characters seem like mere sidenotes for the book as his attention to descriptions of every single mystic rite started reading more like a travel log through this historical fictional world. There's a lot of endnotes with the book as well; something that I'm used to paying attention to every time I pick up a book for class or for possible thesis research; not so much something that I focus on when I'm trying to just read for pleasure. Perhaps it's Carr's ability as a military historian that throws me (since I have never been a fan of any military history) because the book does come across as a historical text in some ways. I may be in school for my history masters, and I may love the subject...but I didn't love the way it merged with the fantasy that I wanted. I'm impressed by Carr's ability to create such a fictional world right in the middle of our historical timeline, but I can't say that I actually enjoyed trying to reconcile the fiction with history in my mind. The book can also be seen as issuing several not very subtle warnings to modern-day societies as some of the problems in the tale of Broken can still be seen if you're looking. I still had questions at the end of the book that were never truly answered, so perhaps there should have been more time spent developing the actual story instead of focusing on making it seem historical as well. Regardless of the negatives that I found in my own reading of the book, it still is one that I will most likely pick up and read again sometime. For anyone who's a fan of both history and fantasy...I think you'll enjoy this book.
What do You think about La Leyenda De Broken (2013)?
About 250 pages too long. Tolkien-like endnotes without the Tolkien-like readability.
—Bridget
The footnotes were the best part of this book, but footnotes can only be so good.
—horsegirl
Medieval alternate history with lots of political intrigue
—plm
