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unmorality 's review for:
Last Days
by Adam L.G. Nevill
2.5 rounded down. I need to not take recs from booktok ever again because holy shit.
I am a very firm believer in the concept of "less is more," particularly where it relates to fiction and particularly particularly where it relates to horror fiction. I think it's basically impossible to be scary when you're doing it over 500 pages; I'm sure someone could prove me wrong but this book certainly doesn't. The actual bones of the story were interesting to me, but like did anyone edit this? The manner in which information is revealed is a bit wonky, mostly because it exists in infodumps from various involved characters. Even though I found these sections very interesting generally, I question the technical utility of this method. Also, Nevill does a lot of phonetic dialogue, which has been a bane of my existence since I was like 12 because it's rarely done well. I can't speak to the correctness with which he writes British dialogue, but almost every American character in this novel speaks with a pronounced Southern accent and it's grating every single time.
So much of this book is just painstaking descriptions of various locations. Like every location gets pages of description and it just was not necessary. I do not need to know exactly what a character's fucking kitchen looks like down to the moulding, I just need the general impression of the place. Detail is not scary, it's tedious. I think you could cut half this book if you properly edited these sections specifically.
Lastly, whenever Nevill digresses from the actual story to wax poetic about the nature of fame, religion, narcisism, humanity, or whatever he says absolutely nothing of value. He compares things that are not materially similar and he draws conclusions that are just misanthropic middle-aged white guy shit. Like I could just go talk to my dad about this stuff and it would maybe be more insightful, which is saying a lot! I was initially very forgiving about this because I just assumed it was part of the 3rd person limited and it was more Kyle's perspective, but the author has other characters say exactly the same borderline reddit atheist nonsense. Is there some kind of bonus authors get when they clumsily discuss the Holodomor with zero reason or like is that just something these guys do for fun?
I am a very firm believer in the concept of "less is more," particularly where it relates to fiction and particularly particularly where it relates to horror fiction. I think it's basically impossible to be scary when you're doing it over 500 pages; I'm sure someone could prove me wrong but this book certainly doesn't. The actual bones of the story were interesting to me, but like did anyone edit this? The manner in which information is revealed is a bit wonky, mostly because it exists in infodumps from various involved characters. Even though I found these sections very interesting generally, I question the technical utility of this method. Also, Nevill does a lot of phonetic dialogue, which has been a bane of my existence since I was like 12 because it's rarely done well. I can't speak to the correctness with which he writes British dialogue, but almost every American character in this novel speaks with a pronounced Southern accent and it's grating every single time.
So much of this book is just painstaking descriptions of various locations. Like every location gets pages of description and it just was not necessary. I do not need to know exactly what a character's fucking kitchen looks like down to the moulding, I just need the general impression of the place. Detail is not scary, it's tedious. I think you could cut half this book if you properly edited these sections specifically.
Lastly, whenever Nevill digresses from the actual story to wax poetic about the nature of fame, religion, narcisism, humanity, or whatever he says absolutely nothing of value. He compares things that are not materially similar and he draws conclusions that are just misanthropic middle-aged white guy shit. Like I could just go talk to my dad about this stuff and it would maybe be more insightful, which is saying a lot! I was initially very forgiving about this because I just assumed it was part of the 3rd person limited and it was more Kyle's perspective, but the author has other characters say exactly the same borderline reddit atheist nonsense. Is there some kind of bonus authors get when they clumsily discuss the Holodomor with zero reason or like is that just something these guys do for fun?