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A review by verkisto
Every Last Drop by Charlie Huston
3.0
This is what I thought was the last book in the Joe Pitt/Vampyre series, and it’s a book that I’ve had hanging around the house for several months. I mean, I like Charlie Huston’s stories, and when it comes to dialog, I honestly can’t think of anyone who writes it sharper and more effectively than he does, but the gritty, dark-noir novels he get tend to get repetitious. At this point, I was just reading this book to finish out the series and see how certain things that happened at the end of the last novel got resolved. Now, I feel like I’m going to need to read the next one, too, since not a whole lot gets resolved in this novel.
Things start off dark and serious in this book, and then just keep going in that direction. It reminded me a little of the final volume in the Hank Thompson trilogy, also by Huston. The main character in both had been taken along a dark journey, mostly by accident, partly by making some pretty dumb decisions, and wound up at their lowest points by the last book. I guess that makes sense, dramatically — you want to see the protagonist redeem himself by the end of it all — but sometimes it’s hard to be sympathetic with him, since a lot of the terrible things happening to him are happening because of his own actions. With Every Last Drop, I feel like little happens. Like every other Fables collection, this book felt more like a transitional novel to help set up the events of the next book.
There’s nothing new with this book, as far as Huston’s books go, but that’s not really a bad thing. His stories still read with a clarity that I don’t see in many writers’ books, and they rarely disappoint. Sometimes just knowing that you can depend on a writer to tell a good tale, without getting hung up on how original or important it may be, is all you need.
Things start off dark and serious in this book, and then just keep going in that direction. It reminded me a little of the final volume in the Hank Thompson trilogy, also by Huston. The main character in both had been taken along a dark journey, mostly by accident, partly by making some pretty dumb decisions, and wound up at their lowest points by the last book. I guess that makes sense, dramatically — you want to see the protagonist redeem himself by the end of it all — but sometimes it’s hard to be sympathetic with him, since a lot of the terrible things happening to him are happening because of his own actions. With Every Last Drop, I feel like little happens. Like every other Fables collection, this book felt more like a transitional novel to help set up the events of the next book.
There’s nothing new with this book, as far as Huston’s books go, but that’s not really a bad thing. His stories still read with a clarity that I don’t see in many writers’ books, and they rarely disappoint. Sometimes just knowing that you can depend on a writer to tell a good tale, without getting hung up on how original or important it may be, is all you need.