Tyll started off promising enough, an enigmatic figure from German folklore taunting the residents of a small village. Then we delve into his back story as a child, the hardships he faces from his abusive household, spending the night alone in a spooky forest, and witnessing the execution of his father by witch hunters. It sets up a supernatural premise, but falls short on ultimately delivering. The book becomes more of an historical novel outlining the politics of the thirty years' war and the exile of the king and queen of Bohemia, which unfortunately, I found deathly boring. The book is not told in a chronological fashion, which I don't have a problem with, my main gripe was the lack of story. There is no central narrative as such, just a series of interweaving sketches jumping from past to present where Tyll comes and goes, meeting obscure characters from European history.
A tighter plot and, dare I say, looser backdrop of historical conflict, would have made for a more engaging read. I'm sure everything is very well researched, as the opening plaudits state, but I could have just read a history book if that was what I wanted. I wanted sorcery, folklore, and mayhem, not real life Game of Thrones. Kehlmann also continues the somewhat tired tradition of having us believe ye olde Europe's woods were full of marauding rape gangs, just waiting to sink their teeth into tender young runaways. I thought Tyll's gang rape was a bit unnecessary for his character development, you can paint a traumatic childhood without such excesses. I would say I enjoyed the first third of the book, but lost interest when the POV character shifted away from Tyll. Perhaps something was lost in the English translation.
Rating: 2/5
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