DubaiReader

I was expecting more from this book, considering all the accolades and hype it has earned. I found the first 18% confusing, until I was fortunate enough to come across the audiobook, narrated by Adjoa Andoh and that was a huge improvement. Adjoa's Nigerian, London and Russian accents made such a difference to my enjoyment of the book and may have even raised my star rating from 2 to 3 stars.

The premise of the book was strong, that women suddenly developed a skein across their shoulders that generated electrical power and gave them a significant edge over men. The descriptions of this organ twitching and twisting, and the resultant surge of power, were excellent. The characterisations were also strong, boosted by Adjoa's narration.

Some of the violence was a bit lurid for my taste and the use of the 'f' word was offensively excessive. 'f' this, 'f' that, not even any variety of swear word, maybe valid in some cases but totally overused.

The inserts describing museum artifacts were well read in the audio version, by a male narrator, but I couldn't picture the items he was describing and so these parts were frustrating. I was also unsure through most of the book, whether the action was taking place 5,000 years ago, or whether it was in current time - or maybe it happened in current time and was being recorded 5,000 years hence. That may have been a failure on my part, I shall have more idea once my book club discusses it tomorrow.

The ending was a bit weird in my opinion, I felt I'd been left hanging a bit.

Maybe I will edit my review after tomorrow's discussion, but I wanted to get my opinions down before others voiced theirs.