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I'm going to get this out in the open right from the start, I did not come at IQ84 with a completely open mind, I'm a huge Murakami fan, and with all the hype, yes, I was expecting them to be the greatest books known to man. Which would explain why I feel like an absolute traitor to be writing this...I didn't think they were very good. They were no Dance, Dance, Dance, no Norwegian Wood, and certainly no After Dark or Underground. They were by no means bad books, the characters were interesting and the premise of the plot was good, the writing was wonderful and they had all your usual Murakami traits. But for me it just didn't happen. The romance was unbelievable and underwhelming, the sexual violence of the cult was unnerving and made very uncomfortable reading, and at nearly a thousand pages long you never really felt as though they got off the ground. The humour in the surreal was not there, nor was the romance of isolation. I think I feel better for having got my treachery off my chest now, I can go back to reading all the other books and gloss over the existence of these three, like I do with Persuasion.
