Instruct: Classify a review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: a novel with too much starch

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get into this novel. Perhaps it is the translation, it may be wooden. I don't know Italian, so that's only a guess. Maybe the translator did the best with what she had. But as I read, I had the strange feeling that every sentence was written in the passive voice. I felt very distanced from everything. SEARCHING FOR THE EMPEROR is surely more a hippopotamus than a gazelle. From the very first sentence you feel that everything is decided, given, and written in stone. All you have to do is read how the people felt about it. Are you so interested ? This is what you will have to decide if you choose to read this book. I think the world is full of many other novels. Try them.