Pick Up Salamander Scripted By Thomas Wharton Issued As Text

this as a girl, found the story stayed with me even though the title did not, I have been looking for it since, I can't review it properly since I haven't read it in so long however I do remember it to be set in a rather long time line and was quite an adventure, never thought the characters would be where they are at the end given the beginning.
I am very sad to lower my previous rating of four, I first read this book when I was aboutand I remember being blown away by the story which obviously didn't happen this time around, It certainly has some very nice passages and interesting concepts but I am not happy with the execution, being that the confusing format and the complete flatness of the characters.
Halfway through I felt disconnected and utterly bored I lost interest and it didn't really come back, Basically it failed to give me any kind of emotion,
I will give this bookbecause I still feel attached to it somehow and I am sure I will probably be rereading this in the future but, for now, I feel disappointed.
I'm almost certain this is a very good book and I just underappreciated it, It's entirely my fault. I read it too slowly, I left big gaps between reading sessions, I kept forgetting what had transpired, I didn't follow it closely enough,

I'm so relieved that it's over though, This book started out with such promise, Mysterious books, riddles, a magic castle, a forbidden love it had all these incredible elements! And then it kind of fell apart, The characters I found most interesting in the beginning disappear, Those that remain go through an almost surreal adventure around the world, It was so strange and fast paced, It was hard to keep up, The ending did not satisfy, Disappointing overall. This book is filled with all kinds of lovely things: it's clearly influenced by Borges only a fulllength narrative, Eco only characters that the reader can warm up to, has a touch of steampunk only eighteenth century, and a whole lot of metanarrative the central plot impetus is the creation of an infinite book, and there's lots about the nature of books.
Oh, and female pirates servants girls and slaves, secretly destined for colonial prostitution, who've rebelled, a clockwork castle, and automata, A smart postmodern fairy tale, I loved it! I began to read Salamander without knowing what I was getting into, I thought it might be a "useful" book, an apt vehicle for my concluding marks in my thesis,

Little did I know that the adventures barelycontained in Salamander would spill all over my argument's cleanly delineated thematic areas, running at will up and down the narrow plane of my thesis.
Like the adventurer who dreams of infinity, I too was caught up in the majesty of the tale, the unpredictability of the proceedings, Beautiful ideas such as the clockwork puzzle castle combine with thrilling passages worth the memory of Stevenson in this novel that chronicles what Borges also found so intriguing, and repellent: the creation of an infinite book.
Thomas Wharton comes close to Jeanette Winterson and Audrey Niffennegger for flutes of bubbly imagination, This book is an ode to reading, to books, to literary devices, Like the abovenamed authors, or Marquez, this is a book that is doubly fabulous: for the virtuoso performance of literaryness, AND for the creativity which continually surprises the reader.
I kept thinking "how did he think of that It's hard to know what to make of Thomas Wharton's Salamander, Even two days after I finished reading it, it's still in my brain, It's probably a good thing I was in a hotel that was stingy about Internet, or I would have rushed out a review right away, Perhaps the only definitive thing I can say about Salamander is that it is a that might have the power to turn nonreaders into bibliophiles with its blend of fairy tale, high adventure, philosophy, and love.
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Read the rest of my review at sitelinkA Bookish Type, What started out as a beautifully written, fantasy filled story with a fairy

tale like quality ended in a meandering mess that I had a hard time following or caring about.
This is a story within a story one of those books that's a bit hard to pin down, In it a printer is tasked to make a book without end, At times I thought I might be reading that book, while the story is mostly linear is does not always seem straightforward, There is love and heartbreak and adventure and monotony within these pages it felt like reading several distinct books, I absolutely recommend it to those who enjoyed Life of Pi and similar novels, Magical read, a veritable steampunk feast with mad counts ruling over mechanical castles, mysteries and a story about printing books and printing words on hearts,
For me it's worth reading just to fall in love with the first chapters, With moving bookcases, clockwork people and trapped heroes and beds that travel the halls of a magical castle at night,
It trails off in the latter third which is a shame,
But totally worth reading just for the delight of the first two thirds, A book for steampunk lovers, book lovers and fans of Alice in Wonderland type of magical confusions and mysteries, The imagery lingers and really i loved it, if only it had kept up the promise of it's ambitions, Wonderfully inventive for example, a castle built on the border, with every room on the move, so that you never know in what country you are, and never have to pay taxes.
. . but unlike say the Alchemist or the Little Prince, it is just imagination for the sake of imagination, and so detailed that no contribution is needed from the reader.

Nicholas Flood, an unassuming eighteenthcentury London printer, specializes in novelty books books that nestle into one another, books comprised of one spare sentence, books that emit the sounds of crashing waves.
When his work captures the attention of an eccentric Slovakian count, Flood is summoned to a faraway castle a moving labyrinth that embodies the count's obsession with puzzles where he is commissioned to create the infinite book, the ultimate neverending story.
Probing the nature of books, the human thirst for knowledge, and the pursuit of immortality, Salamander careens through myth and metaphor as Flood travels the globe in search of materials for the elusive book without end.
Well it took overmonths but I finally finished it, Unfortunately, I honestly cannot say whether my lack of interest was because of a reading slump in general or because of this book specifically, Either way, I can only really give this book a solid/stars,

The premise of the story was interesting enough and there were plenty of compelling characters, However, I felt like the story suffered slightly from a lack of clarity and cohensiveness in the plot, It was hard for me to remember the events leading up to a specific incident or understand the motives behind certain characters actions, I think overall my understanding of the book is at a very shallow level,

Nevertheless, I did really enjoy some of the fantastical elements in the story, I do think the book may capture the imagination of a more engaged and motivated reader, Not exactly fiction, not exactly fantasy, Thomas Warton's Salamander is an interesting story about the very essence of books, First examining the type and the bindings, and then travelling deeper in to the hidden meanings and mysterious places locked within books, Salamander will ensure that you never look at a book in quite the same way again.
This book is hard for me to rate, I want to give itstars, because that's how I feel, it was ok however, I'm giving itbecause it was more ok/like than ok/didn't like, and I've given lesser booksfor various reasons, soit is for now at least.


Why the indecision On one hand, Salamander had a lovely multilayered story in a whimsical world, On the other hand, it never really sucked me in, The characters had cool names, but I didn't care that much for any of them, The author had many many cool ideas, but he didn't explore them as fully as I would have liked, Some parts of the story felt rushed, while others were drawn out, There were some inconsistencies near the end of the book, and one plot point from near the end didn't make any sense to me, Salamander should have been a quick fun read, but instead I found it hard to keep my attention focused on what I was reading and I didn't ever really feel I entered the world Wharton created.
Perhaps this is because I just read The Eyre Affair and it had many similarities in the way the world in the book looked at books, Perhaps instead it is because, despite it's promise, the book just isn't that good, It's also completely possible that the book is fantastic and I just didn't read it at the appropriate time for me, Whatever the case, the book is fine, not amazing, and if you read it you won't regret it but you also may not find yourself blown away by it.


How's that for helpful : Salamander was so nearly a really good book, It falls away a bit in the second half, occasionally returning to form with scenes like Djinn I think it was him walking through the forest as the automaton.
There were some beautiful passages of prose, very poetic at times, He is undoubtedly a very good writer, I just felt that the story lost its way in the sedcond half,
However, the first part of the book is as good as anything I have read, Wonderful descriptions of the mechanical castle, It is like something out of a fairy tale, Overall, after a promising start I was a little disappointed,
Ho scovato questo libro per caso, come spesso accade, e sono rimasta molto intrigata dalla trama, Un libro che parla di libri che vanno oltre i loro limiti: prometteva davvero di essere avvincente,

La prima metà lo è stata davvero, Ogni personaggio è così peculiare da far divorare una pagina dopo l'altra per saperne di più su di lui, Il castello del conte, poi, pieno di misteri, ingranaggi e libri rari è affascinante e promette sviluppi interessanti, Già pregustavo scenari pieni di significato quando sono arrivata alla seconda metà e il mio entusiasmo si è bruscamente raffreddato,

Qui, infatti, il romanzo perde il fascino del mistero e assume uno sconfortante guazzabuglio di azioni che vorrebbero essere avventure, ma hanno il solo merito di confondere il lettore, di fargli perdere il senso delle vicende oltre che annoiarlo in alcuni punti.
Un vero peccato, perché era un libro pieno di potenziale: a quale lettore non piacerebbe leggere la storia del libro infinito Such a wonderful and strange little book! I found it where these kinds of books are supposed to be found in a second hand book market in London.
It is a twisting and turning tale of books, stories, words, paper, adventure everything book is made of! When I had finished it I wanted to read it again, just to see if I had missed something.
It is a story that requires you accept the unexpected and use your imagination which makes it even more marvelous, I really enjoyed it and can't wait to read it again!
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