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retswerb's review against another edition
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
1.5
Chuck Wendig sits wordlessly at his computer, his shoulders hunched over the keyboard like a crow guarding a french fry. His fingers slam into the keys, pistoning up and down, over and over, as words spill from his brain. He pauses for a moment to take a sip of his coffee, coffee that is stale and cold as a dead body. He doesn't know what's coming next in this story he's writing - still hasn't figured out an ending, how is he going to tie these loose ends up in a satisfying way? He's never let that stop him before, though, and he's not about to start now. "You've got this," he tells himself, and he feels his pulse slow down like a marathon runner jogging to a stop at the end of a race.
The only saving grace this book has is that Wendig keeps the pace up through most of the book so it doesn't drag. He writes like Dan Brown, relying on pacing in a hope that the reader won't stop to think about how many holes the plot has, how thin and stereotyped the characters are, or how many dumb similes were in the last paragraph.
At one point in the book we get a snippet of a book being written by a minor character. The idea is that we laugh at how bad the writing is, how grandiose and overblown. The thing is, the snippet is virtually indistinguishable from the terrible writing that surrounds it in the actual book, the one I spent some 10 hours of my life listening to.
This book really is bad, and almost every chapter has something in it that makes no sense. Why does the lodge not track ip traffic? Why is there a Southwest A380?Who has been taking care of Reagan's daughter all this time and why are they suddenly out of the picture? Why are Predator drones sitting armed in middle America? How does Typhon have cult followers outside the lodge before anyone knows what Typhon is? Why is the supposed conspiracy nut actually the most grounded character? Why wouldn't Typhon overwhelm Chance with the little metal spheres directly instead of using them to re-animate Shane? These are just a handful that come immediately to mind.
I could complain more, but why? Don't bother reading this book.
The only saving grace this book has is that Wendig keeps the pace up through most of the book so it doesn't drag. He writes like Dan Brown, relying on pacing in a hope that the reader won't stop to think about how many holes the plot has, how thin and stereotyped the characters are, or how many dumb similes were in the last paragraph.
At one point in the book we get a snippet of a book being written by a minor character. The idea is that we laugh at how bad the writing is, how grandiose and overblown. The thing is, the snippet is virtually indistinguishable from the terrible writing that surrounds it in the actual book, the one I spent some 10 hours of my life listening to.
This book really is bad, and almost every chapter has something in it that makes no sense. Why does the lodge not track ip traffic? Why is there a Southwest A380?
I could complain more, but why? Don't bother reading this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Suicide, Gore, and Injury/Injury detail
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