The War & Peace Readalong: Week Eleven

We're almost there guys!  After reading books 14 and 15, all we have left are the epilogues - we are so close to finishing off this titan of a book!

1) Do you think the book ended in a funny place or did it seem like a logical place for the story to end?

So much has happened in the last chapters of the book! Various smiley-faces reflect my reaction:

Petya gets himself killed :(
Pierre loses his fellow captive friend Platon to the French brutality :'(
 Dolokhov redeems himself by rescuing Pierre :)
The French army is a hot mess in their retreat from Russia :P
Napoleon abandons his army :I
Natasha finds out about Petya and is still grieving for Andrei :(
Marya is being super awesome and looking out for Natasha :)
Kutuzov is so done with war and goes to Vilna to chill :I

...but let's focus on Pierre, our main protagonist and Leo Tolstoy's pet project.

Pierre gets ill, then does some serious self-reflection and is much calmer out of this whole ordeal/existential crisis he's been battling to find out his purpose in life.  He's been through his own War in losing Helene, shooting a man, getting caught up with the Freemasons, rushing into war, being held in captivity, and only after getting ill and having the time to reflect on all that's happened has he finally gotten his Peace.  This is proved by the fact that Pierre has lost so much yet feels richer from his experiences. Pierre, now much wiser and calmer, falls in love with Natasha, who has lost much herself and can empathize with him.  Everyone (Pierre, Mary, and Natasha, anyway) has their happy ending... except I feel like it doesn't seem like quite an ending?  It does seem quite abrupt.  I guess that's what the epilogues are for!

2) How do you see the characters five years on from now? Will everybody get a happy ever after? 

I hope that Pierre marries Natasha and he finally settles down!  I also want Marya to have a happily-ever-after with Nikolai.  I forget who else is still in the story.  Who isn't dead yet?!  Sonya will be with that person.

3) Do you think Tolstoy is a biased narrator? If so, in what way?

Yes, he is biased in the way he describes the Napoleonic wars.  The French are a mess, Napoleon is just has luck and happenstance working for him.  I know that he's trying to write historical fiction here and trying to keep things fair, but I know that he's siding with the motherland here! Also, pointless deaths of women and glazing over their plot-lines because the men are obviously more important.

4) Are you still enjoying this book or are you honestly just waiting for the damn thing to stop talking?
Not going to lie here - I wish the book was shorter, but I enjoyed reading it overall! I'm glad that I have such a supportive group of book-friends reading alongside me.  I'm very proud of us! Reading (and finishing!) such an epic is an epic accomplishment in itself!  I have to give my edition of the book a lot of credit here because the translation was easy to read, with very little French interruptions to sidetrack my progress.  Though the book was enjoyable, I'm looking forward to reading the last of it so I can cross it off my bucket list!