A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Published 2021 · 105,600 words · about 7 hours at an average pace
How hard is A Marvellous Light to read?
A Marvellous Light scores 41 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Edwardian vocabulary plus invented magical terms.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Clear genre sentences.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Concrete, with a magic system to hold.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Considerable world-building.
- Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
- Alternating viewpoints, both reliable.
- Symbolic density: 38 out of 100
- The hedge maze and the contract carry modest weight.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Comic irony in the banter.
- Resolution withholding: 38 out of 100
- A trilogy opener, so much is withheld.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Linear.
How A Marvellous Light is regarded
A Marvellous Light holds a literary regard score of 33 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.