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The rundown is as follows: While The Fifty Year Sword is a great book and a good example of Mark Z. Danielewski's unique way of telling a story while turning it inside out, the gimmick of five separate narrators overlapping with different-colored quotation marks actually takes away from the story. By cluttering the relatively-short book with an unneeded visual gimmick, Danielewski does himself a disservice and creates a minor turn-off for people who would normally be into this kind of book. In its favor is the fact that it's essentially a children's book for adults, and hiding under the simplistic language is a genuinely creepy story that even when you guess the eventual ending manages to hold its tone and deliver something chilling. Despite the gimmick, the childlike language coupled with the eerie imagery creates a horror story that is at once instantly engaging and easy to understand.
The bad bit of course is the gimmick, which obscures a really cool book by having five people talk in nested quotation marks to tell a story. Please, once and future authors who read this blog, don't ever do this. Don't ever have your narrators narrate nested like this. More, as always, below.
So the rundown is as follows: Lunatics is a funny if profane and sometimes excessively juvenile book. The dialogue and characters shine through, and when the book hits its comic rhythm, the beats come faster than anything I've read. It's hilarious in the right places, and even when the notes don't hit, it keeps up the pace fast enough that it doesn't really matter that the joke flopped. The book's already on to the next one. While Dave Barry has always been weaker in his fiction as opposed to his nonfiction, Alan Zweibel manages to shore him up just enough to carry the day.
The drawbacks are that the book occasionally moves too fast, which left me mulling over previous details before I had time to process the next ones, and a lack of enough sympathetic characters to go around. Where both characters attempt being unsympathetic, only one of them actually pulls it off, leaving one feeling a little lopsided, since Philip Horkman (one of the two point-of-view protagonists) is actually kind of a nice person having a successive series of bad days, while Jeffrey Peckerman (the other protagonist) openly uses racist and offensive language the way I use commas and footnotes. Still, in the end, the alternating points of view provide an interesting look at the story of two men continually in over their head. More, as always, below.
I find myself in an odd humor this week. I hope you'll humor me as I go on this exploration of what about the book I was supposed to read disappointed me. Regular reviews will come back next week. Diatribe below.
So the rundown is as follows: They don't make books like this any more. Or they don't often. But once in a blue moon a really good procedural, one with the proper amount of grit and some intelligence, finds its way to shelves. And it's amazing. The hero is flawed, the characters are colorful, every line is interesting and unfolds the mystery properly, and the dialogue is fantastic. This is definitely one of the books I recommend picking up, even if you don't really dig police procedurals. Warren Ellis has long been a writer to watch, and this, while not his magnum opus, is definitely a book high up in the canon. More, as always, after the jump.
The rundown is as follows: This is the vampire novel that makes me not hate vampire novels. In a world populated with melancholy pale people bemoaning immortality and sometimes reveling in treating humans like cattle, this book at least turns the tropes on their ear and does them well. It's sweet, sad, a little cute, and manages both some horror and romantic comedy in a lovely style. The worst weakness the book has are that its male protagonist is a bit of a wimp, and that it is followed by two sequels that are regrettably canon. But of Christopher Moore's books, this is the one I believe should be the high-water mark, and the fact that I've read it five times without getting bored of it once means that no matter what, it has a place in my permanent collection, and should at least be attempted by you guys. Unless, you know, you hate fun* or aren't big on romantic comedies or something.
*If you hate fun, why do you even read these reviews?
So the rundown is as follows: There is a good book here, but it's in desperate need of an editor to bring it out of its shell. While the characters are colorful, they tend to be dependent on the two somewhat-weaker protagonists, and overall the feeling is that Douglas Jaffe tells us more than shows us about these people. Ultimately, the book gets caught up in its own setting and mythology, and while that would be a strength for a nonfiction book, it only detracts from the story here. Chasing Dragons does come together into a very good ending, but by that point, the journey causes it to lose its impact. The book is not poorly-written, it could just benefit from a stronger editorial control, and perhaps a rewrite of the initial few chapters. While I cannot recommend Chasing Dragons to all but the most persistent, I am impressed with Mr. Jaffe as an author and hope to see more from him.
So I decided to turn over a new leaf and start out the New Year sick. I can't quite get my brain into writing mode while trying to figure out why my body hates me, so I'm gonna be putting this on hold while I recover. I know, sadly I'm no Peter Watts (Link not safe for work or mealtimes), but I promise that when I'm up, you guys are my first priority.
See you when I'm well!
