Review by Books_are_Life -- (Ways to) Lucena

[Books_are_Life]

[Following is a volunteer review of "(Ways to) Lucena" by Mois Benarroch.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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(Ways to) Lucena by Mois Benarroch

This book is labeled as Sci-Fi/Fantasy and in the description there is mention of time travel. I found this to be a bit of a disappointment. The Sci-Fi elements are practical nonexistent and I would actually say that this book is more along the lines of a Historical Fiction novel. This book brings you through a lot of the less known hardships of the Jewish culture over the years. There are also strong ties to being different types of Spanish (Spain, Brazil, Mexico, and Morocco) and writing themes.

This book is more of a string of stories and poems tied to the main story of an old man talking to one of his descendants. This old man is about to reach 1,000 years old and at that time he will finally pass away instead of restarting his life at 20. At a hotel in Malaga he meets with his descendant for seven days in order to pass on his legacy. His descendant, Samuel, is a young man trying to find his place in the world. He is fighting with his parents with writing short stories and poetry. This book is written in the way that is full of short stories and poems with the main story of the old man and his descendant that portray the hardships of the Jewish community.

I was very much confused throughout most of the book. The start of the book is about Issac Benzima the only character that I would say experienced true time travel. The author went into much detail here that I almost believed this was the real story. The main story about the old guy and his descendant talking lack much detail that it had the same feel as the rest of the short stores excluding the first one. This show the very dark side of the long term exclusion that the Jewish people have had to deal with from every community they settle with.

I rate this book to be 2 out of 4 stars. This is a very opinion based rating as though I found this not to be my cup of tea I do see how this can be others. The best part of this book is it gets you to think and learn. The author is also well written and also clean not filling the page with useless information. Because of the author’s writing style, how it got me to think, and a decent story I almost gave it a 3 however I had so serious issues with it. The poems I had a problem with. I had no context to put them into therefore there are these pages filled with words that sound pretty but why are they there I have no idea. The way the book was structured made it feel quite choppy and personally I do not like chopping reading. I wish also the stories all had a bit more connection across the board. It really would have be cool if the stories we of the old guy and from his point of view. Thus it got a 2 out of me.

Though I did give it a 2 it is not that bad of a book. I can see that some people will find the issues that I had with the book to be a very minor detail. I recommend that you read this book to find if you personally like this book or not. Who knows you might learn something as well.

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(Ways to) Lucena
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[Gingerbo0ks]

This book sounds a bit too choppy for me and I would find it difficult to get in to. This is an honest and detailed review though, hopefully the next book is better!