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A review by wealhtheow
Fall of Light by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
2.0
Opal is the oldest sibling in a family filled with Talents. Every one (excepting her father) has a magical gift; Opal's is to do with light and illusion. She broke free of her controlling mother and created a new identity for herself, as a movie make-up artist. Unfortunately, years of repressing her true feelings and abilities leave her vulnerable to the powerful forces haunting her latest movie set.
This book should have been fascinating and creepy--instead it was frustrating and boring. Opal notices immediately that the leading man is being possessed and that the set itself has some sort of magic thrumming through it, but does nothing about it for fear of getting a bad reputation in the movie business. One by one, everybody else figures out that something is horribly wrong--the leading man literally stabs someone ON FILM and drinks their blood--and each of them say, "eh, let's just see what happens next." The leading man himself is aware that through the set, he's being possessed by an unknown deity who wants to drink people's life force, but decides to stay because abandoning the project would be bad for his career. Um, wouldn't charges based upon the physical and sexual assault be worse? The deity eventually makes everyone on set have an orgy, again ON FILM, and everyone wakes up, figures out what happened, and then goes back to work. WHAT? No one freaks about, no one goes to the cops, no one even demands answers. There is no emotional tension at all, even after events that should cause serious consequences--like, say, getting stabbed, or getting possessed, or getting raped.
And then, randomly, the book ends. No resolution at all. Just--no more writing on the pages. Very weird, and very unsatisfying.
This book should have been fascinating and creepy--instead it was frustrating and boring. Opal notices immediately that the leading man is being possessed and that the set itself has some sort of magic thrumming through it, but does nothing about it for fear of getting a bad reputation in the movie business. One by one, everybody else figures out that something is horribly wrong--the leading man literally stabs someone ON FILM and drinks their blood--and each of them say, "eh, let's just see what happens next." The leading man himself is aware that through the set, he's being possessed by an unknown deity who wants to drink people's life force, but decides to stay because abandoning the project would be bad for his career. Um, wouldn't charges based upon the physical and sexual assault be worse? The deity eventually makes everyone on set have an orgy, again ON FILM, and everyone wakes up, figures out what happened, and then goes back to work. WHAT? No one freaks about, no one goes to the cops, no one even demands answers. There is no emotional tension at all, even after events that should cause serious consequences--like, say, getting stabbed, or getting possessed, or getting raped.
And then, randomly, the book ends. No resolution at all. Just--no more writing on the pages. Very weird, and very unsatisfying.