Reviews for Nine Layers of Sky

The average rating for Nine Layers of Sky based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-07 00:00:00 David Nelson The book defines mediocre. After a few chapters it wasn't really capturing my attention, but I identified pretty strongly with the protagonist and her situation in life for several reasons, so I stuck with it. And while I don't regret that decision, I'm not thrilled with it either. In modern-day Russia a former Soviet scientist works as a cleaning woman and struggles to save enough money for her family to move to Canada in search of better opportunities. On a trip to a neighboring country she finds a small object something like a gemstone, but is disappointed to find that it is apparently worthless. Meanwhile, a several-hundred-year-old "hero" of ancient legend is sent by a mysterious character to find said object. What follows is an utterly predictable and unoriginal "adventure" through multiple parallel universes, accompanied by an equally predictable and underdeveloped "romance" between the two leads as they try to unravel the mystery of this object and the role it has played in the development of the world of the story. Perhaps this is coming off as overly harsh. The book really isn't that bad. If you're stuck on a 6 hour plane ride it will pass the time, and there's nothing really WRONG with it aside from a little sloppiness of description regarding plot events (several times I completely missed the transition to the parallel world and had to re-read several pages to figure out what the heck was going on). It's just incredibly bland. There are plenty more interesting, thought-provoking, and even mindelessly entertaining books out there.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-06 00:00:00 John Bovit I have to admit that rating this book was a very difficult decision, somehow it became personal and even harder because of it. I'm not sure if projecting expectations on reviews makes me a good reviewer or quite the opposite. But actually, might be the former, because one of writer's tasks is to create expectations and then, either ignore them completely (do not read), fulfill them to the letter (mediocre stuff) or blow them up in a way which makes your brain short-circuit. The last one is called inspiration and is the best thing one can get from reading. Of course most books are somewhere on the axis, in between aforementioned defining points. Nine Layers of Sky creates so much promises at the beginning - awful, depressing, but still, very intense ones. Yet halfway through this intensity somehow burns down, or even worse, burns out. The author weaves this amazing atmosphere, both thick and chilly (for me even more striking since I'd qualify it as uncanny valley, not familiar enough to be perceived in a direct, conscious way, but also not alien enough to feel disconnected, something in between; all that spiced up with tales spun around historical references which is my favourite thing to do ever) and then kills it with infodump, almost nonexistent imagery and emotional shallowness. All this somehow simultaneously combined with complete lack of clarity about how this world works (Nine layers? Of sky? But why?) overdoing, or rather overusing (still, I wouldn't say abusing) folklore and multiplying angst. Feeling nothing while reading your potentially favourite book's finale is the worst case of the promise being broken.