Mixed feelings. My love of the narrative voice here knows no bounds – the mangled language of the post-apocalypse, with its folksiness and childlike awkwardness, the seamless move from an omniscient collective to each of the characters, the dreamy (for Slavic lit nerds) interweaving of fairy tales and poetry, the visceral punch of the horror and the many, many lolworthy moments (the sour cream beauty treatment.. slayed me)...
But for most of the way, this was a beautiful premise desperately lacking a strong plot to drive it forward. And when plot finally appears on the scene, it sucks away all the wit and whimsy and turns this into a predictable and increasingly cartoonish political allegory.
It helps, I suppose, to have the context that Tolstaya began writing this in 1986; I had hoped, I guess, for some of the changes in the world since then to be reflected here, since the finish date was 2000. I didn't expect or particularly enjoy ending up in the same enchanted circle of revolutions and monstrous tyrants that Russian intellectuals have been obsessed with since the 19th century.