 The thing that was hiding at the end of the hallway was very frightened and wasn't dangerous but it was old and like all ancient things it was voracious and wretched and covetous. Welcome to Church of the Chair where Argentinian authors are absolutely killing it. I'm your host E and today we're wearing our inspiration on our sleeves. Today we're talking about Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez's first translated novel. Right up front I want to tell you that this book was translated by Megan McDowell. Megan McDowell also translated Mariana Enriquez's first two collections, The Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. While The Dangers of Smoking in Bed was translated after Things We Lost in the Fire, it was actually her first short story collection and I have hailed The Things We Lost in the Fire as my second favorite short story collection of all time only after Clive Barker's Books of Blood. That's going to be important here in a second. The reason why I bring it up is because I was having the same worries that I have with Clive Barker. His short stories are so good and so perfect but I have never really loved any one of his novels. The only one that I really truly fanboyed over was The Thief of All Ways which isn't really indicative of the rest of his books. I am happy to say I had absolutely nothing to worry about. This book captured my attention right off the bat. The quote at the beginning of this video is from page 13 of the book. It starts off hard, it starts off strong and we meet this father and son duo Juan and Gaspar. Juan is the father and Gaspar is his son and it opens very much like Firestarter. They seem to be on the road, on the run for something. The only difference here is they are running towards something instead of away from something. Juan is what is considered in the universe of this book as a medium and he can talk to and interact with a presence known as the darkness. As you would probably assume there is a cult involved and this cult wants to transfer Juan's consciousness into his son Gaspar because Juan has a congenital heart defect. He's had multiple surgeries and he's not going to last forever and these rich elites want to make sure that he is around so that they can perform further rituals. Unfortunately Gaspar does have the same powers as his father but Juan spends a vast majority of the book trying to keep him away from his family this group of rich individuals who want more power, want more money. You know where this is going. Now the book is split up into I believe five or six different sections. You have the opening one which is basically a very close story about a father and son's relationship and how that dynamic works then we are taken to the cult and we leave the cult shortly after and it jumps from that to a very very short section. I believe it's only 15 pages long where most of these sections are usually over 100 pages. It jumps from that to the doctor who did Juan's surgeries it gives his point of view on what happened with that and then we jump into my favorite part of the book which is very reminiscent of It by Stephen King. The next the third section is a coming-of-age story about Gaspar and a group of his friends and an empty house that very much resembles the house on Needbold Street from It. Also there is a character named Adela. Adela when she is introduced and this is why I said that we wear our inspirations on our sleeves around here when she is introduced she is missing an arm and wearing a yellow rain slicker. Remind you of someone? Sometimes cheating death is the worst thing that can happen. And the next section we come to is flashing all the way back to Gaspar's mother's story how she met Juan, how Juan ended up becoming the new medium for the cult and also a very very cool antagonist is brought up that doesn't, isn't outside of this section it's a little boy named Eddie that I really enjoyed reading about and I was hoping that there was going to be more about him, more shown about him but we didn't necessarily get as much as I would have liked. Am I docking any stars for that? Absolutely not because that section was very enthralling especially coming off of the last section that reminded me of it I absolutely love that section. The next section after that is where things got a little slow for me it is a news article called, well there's a section that's written like a news article or a journalistic piece and that section is called the, I'm probably going to murder this pronunciation so my apologies in advance, the Zanartu Pit and we kind of pump the brakes while we go into the future and read this article before finally coming back to Gaspar and the series of events that led him to where he is at in the final section of the novel. I will warn you, once again like I said we wear our inspirations on our sleeves this book is 100% about the journey and not the destination the ending came a little bit quickly for me it went from a literary narrative to almost a heart pounding thriller writing which I was very impressed with but it was very jarring and I had to get back into the flow of things it took me almost a week to read the last section and I'm not 100% sure why especially when I got to the thrilling parts I still wasn't compelled to read I don't know if I felt like this was all going to fizzle out or if the story wouldn't come full circle but there was something there that was keeping me away from coming back to the book and I absolutely hate that so I will be dropping off one star for that because the pacing of the final section I don't think it's anywhere near as strong as the beginning section mainly because every single section seems to start the story over if you're a fan of mosaic novels like me you're probably not going to have an issue with that my issue is the pacing of the final part compared to the pacing of the first four or five sections of the book but I did absolutely adore this journey so I'm going to end up at four stars I am also going to recommend it not to King fans I need to say that not to Stephen King fans but fans of writers like Peter Straub and Clive Barker if you dig what they're laying down definitely pick up this book but that's all the time I have for you today on Time for a Tome if you guys have read this book let me know what you thought of it down there in the comments section please be respectful and do not spoil things if you would like to talk to me about spoilers you can click on the discord link down there in the doobly-doo and you can go over there and talk to me we can DM back and forth or whatever but let me know whether you liked this book explain why you didn't like the book or even why you liked it but until next time there was a black heart that needed him and someday he would fulfill its wishes because when you can't fight the only way to be at peace is to surrender I'll hail the chair