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A review by misterjay
Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese
3.0
Occasionally, for a variety of reasons, it can take a while to get into a book. Mercury Falls is one of those books for me. It took me months to read the first half, and about a day and a half to read the second half. In this particular case, the reason stems mainly from wit versus action.
The first half of the novel takes its time laying out the characters and situation. Unfortunately, a lot of the characters are unlikeable and spout so much nonsense in the guise of humor that it took me a while to get to the heart of the story. Mercury, in particular, is a well-defined character, in as much as he is defined by being mercurial, which can be a lot of fun, but only in small doses. During the first half of the novel, Mercury is tedious and often just irritating. While this does a great job of pointing the readers' sympathies directly at the erstwhile heroine, Christine, it makes the read a bit of a slog at times.
However, Christine herself is the kind of protagonist we can all see ourselves in, and that, combined with steadily increasing action and explanations, makes the novel worthwhile.
The story is convoluted and has great fun poking away at preconceptions of the heavenly realm. The Heaven imagined in Mercury Falls is layer upon layer of red-tape and one well-meaning, rule-following, situationally incompetent bureaucratic angel after another. Hell is more of the same. In between these two realms is our mundane one, where the position of Anti-Christ is a prize given out in a contest and where the winner of such a contest is the most unlikeable human possible.
It all ties together neatly and satisfyingly at the end, but it's a bit of work to get there.
The first half of the novel takes its time laying out the characters and situation. Unfortunately, a lot of the characters are unlikeable and spout so much nonsense in the guise of humor that it took me a while to get to the heart of the story. Mercury, in particular, is a well-defined character, in as much as he is defined by being mercurial, which can be a lot of fun, but only in small doses. During the first half of the novel, Mercury is tedious and often just irritating. While this does a great job of pointing the readers' sympathies directly at the erstwhile heroine, Christine, it makes the read a bit of a slog at times.
However, Christine herself is the kind of protagonist we can all see ourselves in, and that, combined with steadily increasing action and explanations, makes the novel worthwhile.
The story is convoluted and has great fun poking away at preconceptions of the heavenly realm. The Heaven imagined in Mercury Falls is layer upon layer of red-tape and one well-meaning, rule-following, situationally incompetent bureaucratic angel after another. Hell is more of the same. In between these two realms is our mundane one, where the position of Anti-Christ is a prize given out in a contest and where the winner of such a contest is the most unlikeable human possible.
It all ties together neatly and satisfyingly at the end, but it's a bit of work to get there.