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A review by tshim
The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
3.0
This author shows a heckuva lot of promise, but the book's a swing and a miss and a baseball to the eye.
The best way I can put it is this: If you've ever read a China Mieville book, you're familiar with one of my favorite aspects of the New Weird movement, which is the stage of the book where you start to get your bearings in the slightly skew world the book creates, and your puzzlement transitions smoothly into a simultaneous horror and wonder. This book forgot the wonder, and didn't make me care about the characters enough to offset the grimdark turn.
The Gutter Prayer combines an amazing amount of stuff I really really like in books, but puts it together in an unfortunate way. I loved lots of small things about the author's writing style, I enjoyed the plotting, I adored the world, but this is a painful book for me as a reader. I hope the author takes another crack at it, because I'd love to see his vision realized well.
The best way I can put it is this: If you've ever read a China Mieville book, you're familiar with one of my favorite aspects of the New Weird movement, which is the stage of the book where you start to get your bearings in the slightly skew world the book creates, and your puzzlement transitions smoothly into a simultaneous horror and wonder. This book forgot the wonder, and didn't make me care about the characters enough to offset the grimdark turn.
The Gutter Prayer combines an amazing amount of stuff I really really like in books, but puts it together in an unfortunate way. I loved lots of small things about the author's writing style, I enjoyed the plotting, I adored the world, but this is a painful book for me as a reader. I hope the author takes another crack at it, because I'd love to see his vision realized well.