Book review 137
"The Golden Key, or the adventures of Buratina: gold of your eyes, sky of her curls" by Mikhail Kharitonov
Text book in Russian. Second book in trilogy.
The first one was reviewed in Review 134.
This book directly continue the first one. It is started right when Buratina has met the troop of Karabass, and ended when he just has got the Golden Key into his possession.
It is also a thick and smart book, full of sex and cruelty, which are serving only as a mood setters. I've found it less violent than the first one, but not by a huge margin.
In this volume author did not added many new characters (though there are still a lot of them: by the order of magnitude more, than in the ordinary fiction book), but he made the world of this book much more solid. He has explained a lot, adding more questions. Also, there are many quite unexpected crossovers with other fictional universes (the one which amazed me the most is "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov).
Also, the postmodernists plays are even deepened. There are several layers of narrative, which may be traced only in footnotes, and those footnotes are an important (and massive: more than 20% of the whole text) part of this book.
If you've read the first book, you definitely need to read this one too. It is has not a stark and violent aftertaste like the first one, which was like a deep cut through the bleeding flesh. But the wound in readers brain's body is deepened, the scent of blood is stronger, and soon we may even see some marrow.