A Great and Terrible Beauty. The pretentious title promises so much - I was thinking dichotomy, inability to reconcile feelings about the world and life which are at the same time so very dark and extremely bright. I was thinking about a protagonist at odds with herself, with her inability to perceive beauty as the rest of the world does. Great title, terrible book. Childish, superfluous, lack of unity and reason, predictable as the weather forecast for Juneau. 
 The greatest and the most terrible thing is the fact that there is actually no plot to talk about. It is easy to get fooled into thinking there is a plot, having in mind that there are things actually happening, however that is not a plot - it's a sequence of relatively connected events which have no purpose and which do not even require to be unfolded. It's appalling, actually, the fact that there is no major problem, conflict or mystery to which we are introduced and which then gets resolved. Sure, you get your mystery/problem/conflict - but it is resolved on the same page as it is introduced. 
 The saddest thing of them all is the lack of feeling. Normally, I can go even go through a badly written book if the author shows love and passion for his/her characters. However, I think that Ms Libba Bray cares very little about her characters. She's written this book with razor-sharp precision and great care for the language, but with no care for her characters. She feigns feelings about their destinies because it serves the purpose of her so-called plot, however feeble a servitude it is. 
 To sum it up, A Great and Terrible Beauty is not worth the time. Read whisper's review - my reading buddy shares my opinion about this book, and about the trend of watering down plot in order to create a series and maximize profit. Capitalism in literature never looked worse.