Negative Positive
Title: overly pretentious writing
Review: Certainly the subject material is interesting. It's the writer's style that is lacking. It's like she is writing a thesis for university and has to increase the size of the paper and so she writes on and on. It's overly scholarly and analytical when the reader just wants the story/history of these courtesans. As others have said, I mostly skim-read it, skimming over the paragraphs to try to pull out the tidbits of interest.
Is the review positive or negative? 