jason_as 's review for:

Q: A Novel by Evan Mandery

1.0

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So stupid. I have a strong feeling that I may have been intrigued primarily by its unoriginal concept’s similarity to an episode of the best show, Buffy (“Hell’s Bells”). Neurotic, annoying, and there are minor details left unexplained. I kept with it hoping the story would go somewhere, but it does not. Tangents annoy. The second half is ridiculous and does not hold up to the cool premise. The main character is boring and his novel/story ideas sound really dull to match him. Yes, the protagonist is a writer, so meta out the wazoo. But referencing your writing as bad and pointing out flaws that are not corrected does not make it any less bad. The prologue is the best part of the book, quickly painting a believable love story featuring characters that a reader would want to get to know better. It’s almost as if he wrote a short story then decided he would improve slash butcher it by turning it into a time travel novel. I usually read the first then last chapter of a book before deciding if I should read it. I do not know why I did not do this, but this book reaffirmed for me the wisdom of doing so as I would not have wasted time in such a way. However, he’s not altogether a bad writer. His other book First Contact shows definite potential; it mixes genres much more fluidly and has much more sympathetic characters. Both reference both Hitchhiker’s Guide and Woody Allen, and as I read the former I can see that the tangents used are supposed to be in the same vein but they just do not work. They are uninteresting and don’t move the plot or say much about the characters.