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xterminal's review
1.0
Gerard Houarner, Road to Hell (Leisure, 1999)
I struggled through the first fifty pages of Road to Hell, then considered tossing it to the dustbunnies. But then I read a number of reviews that said "it gets better." So I struggled with it while not reading other things for another four months. It may get better, but I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't willing to put in the time to get there. I quit at about page 130.
Road to Hell is a confused mess, to put it bluntly. It looks as if an editor took certain sections of the book, tossed the pages into the air, and started swinging with a meat cleaver. Sometimes the book will stay in the same moment for twenty pages, at other times it goes through weeks in the space of a page, with no delimiters of any kind to tell you time has gone forward. Suddenly, you're in a different setting, wondering "how on earth did I get here?" The characters are flat and uninspired (casualties of "tell, don't show" syndrome). The action is confusing most of the time, and when it isn't it feels as if it were written by someone who was scientifically observing, rather than actually feeling it. Simply put, I couldn't find a single redeeming quality about the book that made me want to read any farther. And with so many books sitting and waiting for me to get to them, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. (zero)
I struggled through the first fifty pages of Road to Hell, then considered tossing it to the dustbunnies. But then I read a number of reviews that said "it gets better." So I struggled with it while not reading other things for another four months. It may get better, but I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't willing to put in the time to get there. I quit at about page 130.
Road to Hell is a confused mess, to put it bluntly. It looks as if an editor took certain sections of the book, tossed the pages into the air, and started swinging with a meat cleaver. Sometimes the book will stay in the same moment for twenty pages, at other times it goes through weeks in the space of a page, with no delimiters of any kind to tell you time has gone forward. Suddenly, you're in a different setting, wondering "how on earth did I get here?" The characters are flat and uninspired (casualties of "tell, don't show" syndrome). The action is confusing most of the time, and when it isn't it feels as if it were written by someone who was scientifically observing, rather than actually feeling it. Simply put, I couldn't find a single redeeming quality about the book that made me want to read any farther. And with so many books sitting and waiting for me to get to them, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. (zero)
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