Like many of Murakami’s novels, not much happens. The plot is secondary to characters and their emotions.

Still, I enjoyed it as I’ve enjoyed all his books.

Norwegian Wood is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The novel is a nostalgic story of loss and burgeoning sexuality. It is told from the first-person perspective of Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a college student living in Tokyo. …

… set in Tokyo during the late 1960s, at a time when Japanese students, like those of many other nations, were protesting against the established order. …

Norwegian Wood was hugely popular with Japanese youth and made Murakami something of a superstar in his native country (apparently much to his dismay at the time). …

Murakami said it was set during the time of his own University education in Tokyo. But that an account of his personal love live in College would have only taken 15 pages. 🙂

But I’m giving up the series.

… written by Canadian author Steven Erikson, published in ten volumes beginning with the novel Gardens of the Moon, published in 1999. The series was completed with the publication of The Crippled Godin February 2011. …

The series is not told in a linear fashion. Instead, several storylines progress simultaneously, with the individual novels moving backwards and forwards between them. As the series progresses, links between these storylines become more readily apparent. …

Reviewing for SF Site, Dominic Cilli wrote, “Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen has single-handedly raised the bar for fantasy literature,” praising Erikson’s ambition and humor …

So what’s not to like?

I got a couple of hundred pages into book 1 – Gardens of the Moon. It’s extremely well written. But too complex. Too confusing. There are too many characters. And far too much magic for me. Magic in a plot structure = Deus ex machina. Any dilemma can be solved by another burst of magic.

Gardens is demanding work. For the casual reader it may prove inaccessibly so …

Suffice it to say that this is a book to be read attentively, and that there is much you will appreciate and much you’ll find bewildering. …

SF Reviews

I found his previous book – 14 – quite juvenile. But this one I can recommend for any fan of Science Fiction.

… far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems—and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret. …

Goodreads

Amazon (2015)

The hero of the book, Leland “Mike” Erikson, has an eidetic memory … which means that he forgets nothing. Mike’s memory and reasoning ability was the highlight for me.

related – Teleportation, The Impossible Dream by Peter Clines