Scan barcode
A review by rowanoats
Consumed by Aaron Mahnke
1.0
This was a book that gave me a lot of feelings and not for the good reasons.
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, and I think there are several reasons why it failed. First off, it's not well written. You can tell it's self published - lots of the the and it's where it's its, which in itself isn't a problem. It adds a certain charm to it and it's not like books with publishers and editors don't have that problem either. It just sticks out so much more when the actual prose isn't that good either. This too, is not really a problem for me. My favourite book series is just as poor in the prose but it's entertaining.
This wasn't. It was dull and for a supernatural thriller, that's a problem. There's a lot of describing and telling rather than showing, a lack of depth in the characters and all too often it felt like the things that Mahnke is really interested in, the supernatural stuff, was shoehorned in to have a plot. You get the beginnings of Lore, but not the mood that makes that podcast so wonderful. I found myself not caring about the characters because I didn't know who they were or what they were doing or why I should worry about them. In some ways it felt like it followed an outline, to the point where events happened because that was the way , even at the cost of the element of surprise. Even the big romantic subplot seemed way out of left field because we were told that the characters loved each other at first sight, but it never felt that way.
The pacing was the biggest issue, I feel. There are a lot of tricks to change the pace of a text and Consumed had so many descriptions of things that could've been left un-described that even tense moments slowed down to a snails pace. Instead of bones breaking the Hero were reminded of breaking the wishbone of a turkey at Thanksgiving, all in a moment of immediate and mortal peril. It's not believable and it makes the characters come across as unsympathetic and lifeless. The decisions were made on feelings the reader never got to feel. We were told to love someone or fear something rather than have our hearts race.
I could go on about this for a long time but I think this sums it up. Really wanted to enjoy this more than I did, but in the end I sighed and rolled my eyes through the whole thing.
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, and I think there are several reasons why it failed. First off, it's not well written. You can tell it's self published - lots of the the and it's where it's its, which in itself isn't a problem. It adds a certain charm to it and it's not like books with publishers and editors don't have that problem either. It just sticks out so much more when the actual prose isn't that good either. This too, is not really a problem for me. My favourite book series is just as poor in the prose but it's entertaining.
This wasn't. It was dull and for a supernatural thriller, that's a problem. There's a lot of describing and telling rather than showing, a lack of depth in the characters and all too often it felt like the things that Mahnke is really interested in, the supernatural stuff, was shoehorned in to have a plot. You get the beginnings of Lore, but not the mood that makes that podcast so wonderful. I found myself not caring about the characters because I didn't know who they were or what they were doing or why I should worry about them. In some ways it felt like it followed an outline, to the point where events happened because that was the way , even at the cost of the element of surprise. Even the big romantic subplot seemed way out of left field because we were told that the characters loved each other at first sight, but it never felt that way.
The pacing was the biggest issue, I feel. There are a lot of tricks to change the pace of a text and Consumed had so many descriptions of things that could've been left un-described that even tense moments slowed down to a snails pace. Instead of bones breaking the Hero were reminded of breaking the wishbone of a turkey at Thanksgiving, all in a moment of immediate and mortal peril. It's not believable and it makes the characters come across as unsympathetic and lifeless. The decisions were made on feelings the reader never got to feel. We were told to love someone or fear something rather than have our hearts race.
I could go on about this for a long time but I think this sums it up. Really wanted to enjoy this more than I did, but in the end I sighed and rolled my eyes through the whole thing.