Helpful Score: 4
This was my first introduction to the author James P. Blaylock. His writing is fantastic and I can't wait to read more by him. Great writing, and an amazing story.
Helpful Score: 1
This book was a chore to read for me. Many of the issues that annoyed me about it won't necessarily get under another reader's skin: the jacket promised me one story, but through the first third I had only seen that story three times, as Blaylock instead showed a historical timeline (and its history just struck me as off, somehow); too many of the viewpoint characters were Evil (as in, *just* evil, acting solely out of greed and, well, evilness); the book touched on a number of issues that are personal for me (southern California, depression, mental illness, and child care to name the biggies) and while I can't say that Blaylock gets them *wrong* I can say they felt wrong, and felt manipulative; and finally, the portrayal of women (three total innocents, two batshit crazy evil chicks, and while that could just be a product of the Good/Evil divide, the one major male antagonist had a sympathetic reason for being the antagonist) just pissed me off.
But I could probably have looked past all that if it weren't for the failings I saw as inherent to the novel itself. I was promised something atmospheric, haunting, evocative; I got a fantasy story of the most literal sort. Everything that happened plot-wise was obvious, and all the descriptions were labored (at least to a California native; maybe readers who've never seen a chapparal environment needed all the repetition). There was a fair amount of "Oooo, what shall I do next to spite the hero, muwahahaha!" internal dialogue and my least-favorite storytelling trope ever, "I can't tell so-and-so this piece of information that will save all our lives because. . . I just can't." And while I know those last two items do often work for other readers and so should maybe be in the first paragraph, they're just so bad that any writer that uses them goes on my "never read again" pile.
But I could probably have looked past all that if it weren't for the failings I saw as inherent to the novel itself. I was promised something atmospheric, haunting, evocative; I got a fantasy story of the most literal sort. Everything that happened plot-wise was obvious, and all the descriptions were labored (at least to a California native; maybe readers who've never seen a chapparal environment needed all the repetition). There was a fair amount of "Oooo, what shall I do next to spite the hero, muwahahaha!" internal dialogue and my least-favorite storytelling trope ever, "I can't tell so-and-so this piece of information that will save all our lives because. . . I just can't." And while I know those last two items do often work for other readers and so should maybe be in the first paragraph, they're just so bad that any writer that uses them goes on my "never read again" pile.
