“Jen M 4 out of 5 stars Invisible Cities is a difficult book to analyze because it is not as cut-and-dry plotwise as we generally expect fiction to be. In this short novel, Kublai Khan receives reports from all of his commanders as they explore the world in search of new lands into which Khan can expand his empire. But the commander he seems to listen to most is Marco Polo, the mysterious Venetian who describes each city he visits with sometimes impossible images. Each city is named like a woman, and each has very distinct characteristics that readers may recognize in their own experiences. Gradually, the book takes on a philosophical feel, as Kublai Khan and Polo speculate on if these cities really exist, or were they dreamed. Or, are they in fact the ones being dreamed.
A friend of mine asked me on Saturday if I liked the book. I did. I'm not really sure why I liked it, since it carried a very dream-like quality through the entire story and more than once, I found myself thinking "What is the point of this?" I'm still not entirely sure of the answer to that, but I do know that the writing itself is some of the most beautiful I've read in a long time. That alone is enough to recommend the book to anyone who doesn't mind drifting a bit sometimes
Cora R 3 out of 5 stars Invisible Cities was a different kind of novel. Instead of telling a story, the author tells many descriptions of imaginary cities. He presents it as Marco Polo describing cities from his travel's to Kublai Khan. Each city has the feel of a dream city with fantastical and/or philosophical elements. The reader is left wondering weather each city exists, if Marco Polo is making them all up, or if they are simply different ways of describing the same city or all cities. The writing is beautiful and often poetic. The images invoked are fantastic. Unfortunately, after the first few cities were described I started to find my attention wandering. I could appreciate the beauty of the writing, but it did not really hold my attention.
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