The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Well, this isn’t the next Kingkiller book, but, fortunately, I wasn’t expecting that. The author himself goes to great length to basically apologize for the book in the introduction and again at the end. I get it. It’s something different. In any event, here we have the story of Auri, the girl who lives in the tunnels under the school. She’s a bit looney. The book reads like a manual on obsessive compulsive disorder as she goes about making sure objects are appropriate for the spaces she puts them. Wow, sounds like an awesome idea for a story, right? Sigh. Anyhow, the writing itself is colorful and does a good job drawing the portrait of Auri’s eccentricities, but it’s not exactly a page-turner. I get that he’s writing about a broken mind, but what do flowery lines like “It was hunkered down and sullen, like a forgotten kiln.” even mean?