Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Published 2017 · 576 pages · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Thriller & Suspense, War Fiction
How hard is Beneath a Scarlet Sky to read?
Beneath a Scarlet Sky scores 17 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Accessible language. Italian and German terms glossed in context.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 18 out of 100
- Action-driven. Ideas conveyed through events.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Fast-paced with period detail layered into action scenes.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Linear chronology following Pino through the war.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The mountains and the sky as freedom and danger.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Earnest narration. Irony emerges from the historical situation.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Pino's survival is certain; the cost of survival is not.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Straightforward chronological adventure narrative.
How Beneath a Scarlet Sky is regarded
Beneath a Scarlet Sky holds a literary regard score of 23 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.