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A review by alceria
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
1.0
It's amazing to me how different the book is from the Showtime series. I'm grateful I became a fan of the show first, because if I had read the book first, I would have no desire to check out the series. There are a few characters who's story lines are drastically different from the show, which is not that big of a deal. The biggest issue I had is that the character of Dexter is just not compelling. We are constantly told that he's calculating and careful, and then pretty much all of his behavior (except for the opening murder in the book) shows the exact opposite. We are told over and over again that Dexter is brilliant, but it seems like he's just an average person surrounded by the exceedingly dimwitted. He doesn't show off his smarts, and rather than using reason and logic to track down the Ice Truck Killer, he resorts instead to....wait for it...psychic dreams. WHAT? That was the clincher that drove this book from "meh" to outright stupid.
I pretty much can't stand Deb on the show or in the book. In both she comes off like a person incapable of independent thought, always reliant on her brother's smarts to advance her own career, yet she also wants to be taken seriously as a cop. Deb is just annoying.
There is no foreshadowing whatsoever about the specifics of Dexter's childhood, other than there was some vague trauma that he can't recall. If I remember correctly, in the the tv series, Dexter is curious about his past and is looking into his records, and it makes the Ice Truck Killer's storyline a bit more plausible. I think if I was going into this without knowledge of the series and then found out about the surprise ending, it would have really seemed out of the blue and kind of cheesy and unbelievable. There was just no skill in building to the conclusion so it just feels like a cheap trick.
Also, Dexter is supposed to randomly figure out that he should go to a shipyard full of countless cargo containers and randomly choose the correct one the killer is in, based on a gut feeling. Right.
Dexter comes very close to murdering Deb in the climax and then the epilogue starts with LaGuerta's funeral and them being chummy. Yeah, I don't buy that either. You don't hang out with someone who just nearly stabbed you to death. I think the reader deserves a little more explanation there.
The alliterative titles of the books in this series gave me pause, and I kept wondering why they were titled as such, because they just seemed dumb. It turns out the author uses alliteration constantly for no real purpose. I found it really annoying and kind of jarring - it kept pulling me out of the story because it was so obnoxious.
Based on how weak this book is, I don't think I'll be reading further in the series.
I pretty much can't stand Deb on the show or in the book. In both she comes off like a person incapable of independent thought, always reliant on her brother's smarts to advance her own career, yet she also wants to be taken seriously as a cop. Deb is just annoying.
There is no foreshadowing whatsoever about the specifics of Dexter's childhood, other than there was some vague trauma that he can't recall. If I remember correctly, in the the tv series, Dexter is curious about his past and is looking into his records, and it makes the Ice Truck Killer's storyline a bit more plausible. I think if I was going into this without knowledge of the series and then found out about the surprise ending, it would have really seemed out of the blue and kind of cheesy and unbelievable. There was just no skill in building to the conclusion so it just feels like a cheap trick.
Also, Dexter is supposed to randomly figure out that he should go to a shipyard full of countless cargo containers and randomly choose the correct one the killer is in, based on a gut feeling. Right.
Dexter comes very close to murdering Deb in the climax and then the epilogue starts with LaGuerta's funeral and them being chummy. Yeah, I don't buy that either. You don't hang out with someone who just nearly stabbed you to death. I think the reader deserves a little more explanation there.
The alliterative titles of the books in this series gave me pause, and I kept wondering why they were titled as such, because they just seemed dumb. It turns out the author uses alliteration constantly for no real purpose. I found it really annoying and kind of jarring - it kept pulling me out of the story because it was so obnoxious.
Based on how weak this book is, I don't think I'll be reading further in the series.