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A review by jasonpellegrinibooks
Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell
4.0
This one started off a bit slow, I must admit. After seeing such high praise for it on bookstagram, I thought I was going to be taken for a wild ride from page one. Instead, I got a lot of set up, which isn’t bad, but just dragged, it felt.
Once the story gets going, though, it got really good and was hard to put down!
There is a gruesomeness to this story that makes you cringe, yet isn’t overdone. That’s a fine line that is so hard to hit for a lot of authors, causing them to go too far, but McDowell hits it. I felt uneasy reading parts, but never thought about putting the book down for gratuitous violence.
There was a twist in this story that I did not see coming, at all, about halfway through. The kind that resets the entire story and leaves you needing to know where the heck this was going to go now. I could see how some might see this as a negative, wondering why they invested so much in the first half for it to take such a wild turn, but I didn’t mind it, ultimately, and it didn’t derail the overall story.
There could have been a little more character development. This book was mostly plot driven, which wasn’t bad, because the plot was a good one. But I can’t help but wonder what level this one might have gone to had there been a real dedication from the author to the more detailed development of characters. Some characters I felt were or were going to be more major players, kind of disappeared and were briefly mentioned during the book’s wrap up. I wonder now if this focus on plot has anything to do with McDowell being a screenplay writer(he wrote the screenplays for Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas, if you weren’t aware)
Over all, this one was very enjoyable and I certainly recommend it highly!
Once the story gets going, though, it got really good and was hard to put down!
There is a gruesomeness to this story that makes you cringe, yet isn’t overdone. That’s a fine line that is so hard to hit for a lot of authors, causing them to go too far, but McDowell hits it. I felt uneasy reading parts, but never thought about putting the book down for gratuitous violence.
There was a twist in this story that I did not see coming, at all, about halfway through. The kind that resets the entire story and leaves you needing to know where the heck this was going to go now. I could see how some might see this as a negative, wondering why they invested so much in the first half for it to take such a wild turn, but I didn’t mind it, ultimately, and it didn’t derail the overall story.
There could have been a little more character development. This book was mostly plot driven, which wasn’t bad, because the plot was a good one. But I can’t help but wonder what level this one might have gone to had there been a real dedication from the author to the more detailed development of characters. Some characters I felt were or were going to be more major players, kind of disappeared and were briefly mentioned during the book’s wrap up. I wonder now if this focus on plot has anything to do with McDowell being a screenplay writer(he wrote the screenplays for Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas, if you weren’t aware)
Over all, this one was very enjoyable and I certainly recommend it highly!