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A review by birdkeeperklink
McCoy: The Provenance Of Shadows by David R. George III
1.0
Ugh, I'm done. I can't take any more of this, I just can't. I know Trek novels are not Great Literature by any stretch of the imagination, but this is bad even for a Trek novel. I will elaborate when I am able to use a real keyboard and not a touchscreen.
Added 13 May, 2014
Okay, here's the elaboration I promised. I hope you weren't expecting paragraphs and paragraphs, because I don't think I have that much to say.
This book is terrible for a couple of very simple reasons. For one, I was on page 39 when I quit and still nothing had happened. McCoy saved Edith, which we already knew was going to happen, in one timeline; in the other, they all sat around in Sickbay speculating on why Kirk and Spock were being weird. McCoy walked Edith from the scene of the near-accident to the mission, then from the mission to her home, and there was a lot of internal monologuing. 39 pages of 'oh, I just love humanity so much, I have to do what I can to help.' It's so, so padded out.
And that was another problem. George spends way too long trying to get across to us just who these people are. Newsflash: this is a Trek novel, and not only that, a Trek novel based on a particular episode! We already know all of these people! You don't need to convince me that Edith Keeler is a great humanitarian by having her repeatedly think and say, 'I just have to help!' We know.
It's pretty melodramatic as well, but in a really...odd way. People weep crystalline tears in specific millimeters. The attempted juxtaposition of poetic description with exact, near-scientific terms just didn't work for me, at all.
The real problem just boiled down to pacing. It was padded to make it longer, which makes everything too drawn out, and probably caused the melodramatic fluff, because every sentence had to be backed by a paragraph of something. If this is just George's writing style, then...ick. Not for me. The beginning of the book, at least, is sooo sloooow that if the rest of the book was that way, then chopping out all the fluff would have made the book easily a third shorter, if not more.
In short, I didn't like it, at all, I didn't finish it, I never want to finish it, I got rid of it already, and I don't recommend it to anyone. It was more disappointing because McCoy is my favorite, but next time I'll know better.
I guess that was a few paragraphs, wasn't it?
Added 13 May, 2014
Okay, here's the elaboration I promised. I hope you weren't expecting paragraphs and paragraphs, because I don't think I have that much to say.
This book is terrible for a couple of very simple reasons. For one, I was on page 39 when I quit and still nothing had happened. McCoy saved Edith, which we already knew was going to happen, in one timeline; in the other, they all sat around in Sickbay speculating on why Kirk and Spock were being weird. McCoy walked Edith from the scene of the near-accident to the mission, then from the mission to her home, and there was a lot of internal monologuing. 39 pages of 'oh, I just love humanity so much, I have to do what I can to help.' It's so, so padded out.
And that was another problem. George spends way too long trying to get across to us just who these people are. Newsflash: this is a Trek novel, and not only that, a Trek novel based on a particular episode! We already know all of these people! You don't need to convince me that Edith Keeler is a great humanitarian by having her repeatedly think and say, 'I just have to help!' We know.
It's pretty melodramatic as well, but in a really...odd way. People weep crystalline tears in specific millimeters. The attempted juxtaposition of poetic description with exact, near-scientific terms just didn't work for me, at all.
The real problem just boiled down to pacing. It was padded to make it longer, which makes everything too drawn out, and probably caused the melodramatic fluff, because every sentence had to be backed by a paragraph of something. If this is just George's writing style, then...ick. Not for me. The beginning of the book, at least, is sooo sloooow that if the rest of the book was that way, then chopping out all the fluff would have made the book easily a third shorter, if not more.
In short, I didn't like it, at all, I didn't finish it, I never want to finish it, I got rid of it already, and I don't recommend it to anyone. It was more disappointing because McCoy is my favorite, but next time I'll know better.
I guess that was a few paragraphs, wasn't it?