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A review by gwendle_vs_literature
A Winter Grave by Peter May
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
This felt like a rushed attempt to turn a mediocre screenplay into a mass-appeal formulaic “gritty”police procedural novel equivalent of a herlequin romance — which is fine if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s not what I like to read. I would have abandoned it after the first few chapters, but it was a selection for one of my two book clubs, so I felt obligated to finish it.
The first chapter was interesting (I felt intrigued, like one should at the beginning of a piece of detective fiction) but then it fell apart.
The writing is choppy, with what could have been decent compound sentences broken up into numerous single-clause sentences, which not only killed any momentum the text might have had, but also frequently resulted in grammatical errors — you cannot have the word “until” in a sentence unless there is a second clause (it can come either before or after the until clause) that explains what was happening until. Putting the until in its own separate sentence, and sandwiching it between two actions either of which could have been the the thing that was happening “until”, is just sloppy writing.
The vocabulary is run of the mill, which is absolutely fine, but makes “oleaginous” stand out like a flashing neon sign — just say oily, dude.
A huge portion of the text is extremely detailed descriptions that do nothing to create a mood, or reveal character, or scatter clues — they’re just long dry descriptions with no purpose. In this book, if the curtains are blue, it’s just because they’re effing blue. I’m not saying that every detail needs to have profound meaning, but it’s nice if some of them do.
I found the characters to be two-dimensional and didn’t particularly care about any of them, because none of them felt like real people.
It was a slog to get through this book, and a relief when I got to “THE END” (which is actually there, in all caps, at the end of the text). There are so many good books in the world; high quality detective fiction, and speculative fiction about climate catastrophe, and suspenseful thrillers, and compelling portraits of flawed characters . . . give this one a pass and read a few of those.
The first chapter was interesting (I felt intrigued, like one should at the beginning of a piece of detective fiction) but then it fell apart.
The writing is choppy, with what could have been decent compound sentences broken up into numerous single-clause sentences, which not only killed any momentum the text might have had, but also frequently resulted in grammatical errors — you cannot have the word “until” in a sentence unless there is a second clause (it can come either before or after the until clause) that explains what was happening until. Putting the until in its own separate sentence, and sandwiching it between two actions either of which could have been the the thing that was happening “until”, is just sloppy writing.
The vocabulary is run of the mill, which is absolutely fine, but makes “oleaginous” stand out like a flashing neon sign — just say oily, dude.
A huge portion of the text is extremely detailed descriptions that do nothing to create a mood, or reveal character, or scatter clues — they’re just long dry descriptions with no purpose. In this book, if the curtains are blue, it’s just because they’re effing blue. I’m not saying that every detail needs to have profound meaning, but it’s nice if some of them do.
I found the characters to be two-dimensional and didn’t particularly care about any of them, because none of them felt like real people.
It was a slog to get through this book, and a relief when I got to “THE END” (which is actually there, in all caps, at the end of the text). There are so many good books in the world; high quality detective fiction, and speculative fiction about climate catastrophe, and suspenseful thrillers, and compelling portraits of flawed characters . . . give this one a pass and read a few of those.