Instruct: Classify a given Amazon review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Slow pacing, ponderous, rude characters...

Not very entertaining. Slow-paced, stereotyped female characters, a purely-evil antagonist with no reason to exist, unevolving personalities, irrelevant plot digressions, endless nasty and pointless dialog.Frau Funke's German-to-English translator evidently missed the distinction between Elves and Fairies - quite clear in the British tradition, but lost here because the German "Elfen" can refer to either. She simply takes whatever magical creature she's heard of and assigns to them whatever attributes strikes her fancy.A good editor would have cut this huge volume down by 30-50%. During storytime I cut out the dross just to hasten making an end. Dreary and tiresome by the end.