PanThe Times (UK)Boyne’s research has attracted negative headlines, due to his list of fabric dye ingredients in a section set in 6th-century Hungary. The content came from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after a Google search. This laissez-faire approach contrasts with the ambitious scope of his novel ... Given this expansive terrain, one might expect A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom to be Boyne’s magnum opus. Instead, the novel is far narrower ... Jung famously suggested that our minds have been moulded by the history of mankind. Boyne fails to consider such evolution but creates historical characters with contemporary consciousness ... Despite these meta moments, the book fails to comprehend that, while imagination may launch the rocket, it will not navigate the landing. That is where duty of care and scrutiny come in. The problem is that these characters are often one-dimensional, and do not provide enough substance for the reader to invest in ... The language spoken by other characters is equally overblown, making them more like caricatures, stereotypes even ... a failure to interrogate the imagination ... Despite the accumulation of selves in the novel, there is no sense of the character’s evolution nor of an interrogation of the self. It is revealing, then, that the most authentic voice is that of Donald Trump ... Had Boyne taken a different perspective on other lives and times, the traveller at these gates of wisdom might have actually walked through.
