Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Slow Regard of Silent Things isn't a story. It is a writer trying to sound intelligent and clever, which is the worst kind of book to read. The first time I realized this was when it took a few paragraphs to describe the main character, Auri, lowering herself into a pool of water. Naked. With the phrase "alltogethers" used multiple times to describe her naked body/genitals. Ack. Even worse are the lists of homonyms and slight word changes that exist for no reason at all. Here's one I made up that sounds similar to the ones in this book: "The image of the rock lingered in her mind like a still frame. Film. Firm." I really, really like the Kingkiller books, but this side-journey that involves not much at all isn't worth buying. Please don't buy it. ---------- I decided to edit my review and add actual text from the book. That way you can judge for yourself whether or not I am being too harsh: Auri looked around the room, all startle sweat and fear. She was tangle and cut-string. Even here. She could see traces. Mantle was all eggshell. Even her most perfect place. Her bed was almost not her bed. Her perfect leaf so frail. Her box of stone so far away. Her lavender no help at all and growing pale. ...She went looking for her name and couldn't even find it flickering. She was just hollow in. Everything was. Everything was everything. Everything was everything else. Even here in her most perfect place. She needed. Please she needed please... But there. Against the wall she saw the brazen gear was all unchanged. It was too full of love. Nothing could shift it. Nothing could turn it from itself. When all the world was palimpsest, it was a perfect palindrome. Inviolate. ...Then she was touching it [a metal gear]. It was so smooth and warm along its face. And all asweat breathless desperate Auri pressed her forehead up against its cool. She took hold of it with both her hands. The sharpness of its edges on her palms was like a calming knife. She clung to it at first, like someone in a shipwreck grips the stone of shore. But all the world around her was still storm. All tumbledown. All crumble pale and ache. And so, with shaking arms she strained against it. She pulled to turn the gear upon its narrow ledge of rock. She spun it widdershins. The breaking way. It tipped from tooth to tooth. She spun the brazen gear and only then did Auri understand the fearsome weight of it. It was a fulcrum thing. It was a pin. A pivot. It shifted, tilted, but truthfully it only seemed to turn. In truth it stayed. It staid. In truth the whole world spun.