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A review by vittorioseg
Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese
2.0
It was mediocre.
Oh don't get me wrong, for those whose this book is the first one, it would be a laugh. It has witty, it has irony and it has many jokes. But that's like saying that those who have never read high fantasy would find the Belgarath to be groundbreaking. After so many books of Pratchett, Adams, and Aragon (Fimfiction, look it up) this was so very rehearsed and bland I honestly had to put down the book after the joke of "My life is anew, now I'm dead" with the corpse in page... something. I knew what the joke was going to be and then realized that almost all the jokes and witticism was telegraphed because they had been done by other authors over and over again.
This is more like a blueprint of how to create a post-modernism parody of Omen that anything else.
But it would have been great if it wasn't for the protagonist. Christine is annoying. She is annoying because she doesn't have a soul, a character. She is a plot coupon that act as the dialogue and the story demands. She has nothing and is aware of nothing but what she must for the story to continue. I honestly couldn't describe it but "I plucky reporter fed up mess up things because she has nothing better to do" and that seems to be it.
Why does she try to save Carl at the beginning? Because then the story would fall apart. She knows that (at that moment) he is the anti-christ and he could destroy the entire world. She had SEEN the powers that be exist and the revelations are real, yet she drives and saves and keep saving a man that could destroy the world and slaughter untold millions because "she si moral" or some nonsense while at the same time saying she wants to stop the apocalypse. It doesn't make sense. Later she is validated, but at the moment she makes de decision she has no way of knowing that. She decided (like in the cabin in the house) that one life is worth more than all of the humanity and that makes her a monster. At least the angels go the excuse that is another race and they are elementals immortals. Yet she continues to say that she is anti-apocalypse while her actions are counterproductive to that in almost every way and the only reason she acts as a heroine is because the world bends backward to make her right.
Its annoying. Her reasoning doesn't look like she is intelligent but that the author is spoon feeding her the answers. In many ways, she is far worse than Carl yet we are supposed to root for her.
And Mercury happens to know everybody and do everything and it's jarring. Honestly, I don't get Mercury. Not as an angel or as an unmotivated worker, but in why he is so competent? Why he is so capable when everybody is literally drones?
So this is a bland novel that tries to be deep but it fails miserable. It doesn't say anything new, doesn't have an interesting premise and the characters are barely constructed.
But if you are new into this settings, this is a great way to start. Is light, is inoffensive and it doesn't force to anything too hard that it could not be enjoyable for a, say airport wait or when you need to rest for other readings.
Oh don't get me wrong, for those whose this book is the first one, it would be a laugh. It has witty, it has irony and it has many jokes. But that's like saying that those who have never read high fantasy would find the Belgarath to be groundbreaking. After so many books of Pratchett, Adams, and Aragon (Fimfiction, look it up) this was so very rehearsed and bland I honestly had to put down the book after the joke of "My life is anew, now I'm dead" with the corpse in page... something. I knew what the joke was going to be and then realized that almost all the jokes and witticism was telegraphed because they had been done by other authors over and over again.
This is more like a blueprint of how to create a post-modernism parody of Omen that anything else.
But it would have been great if it wasn't for the protagonist. Christine is annoying. She is annoying because she doesn't have a soul, a character. She is a plot coupon that act as the dialogue and the story demands. She has nothing and is aware of nothing but what she must for the story to continue. I honestly couldn't describe it but "I plucky reporter fed up mess up things because she has nothing better to do" and that seems to be it.
Why does she try to save Carl at the beginning? Because then the story would fall apart. She knows that (at that moment) he is the anti-christ and he could destroy the entire world. She had SEEN the powers that be exist and the revelations are real, yet she drives and saves and keep saving a man that could destroy the world and slaughter untold millions because "she si moral" or some nonsense while at the same time saying she wants to stop the apocalypse. It doesn't make sense. Later she is validated, but at the moment she makes de decision she has no way of knowing that. She decided (like in the cabin in the house) that one life is worth more than all of the humanity and that makes her a monster. At least the angels go the excuse that is another race and they are elementals immortals. Yet she continues to say that she is anti-apocalypse while her actions are counterproductive to that in almost every way and the only reason she acts as a heroine is because the world bends backward to make her right.
Its annoying. Her reasoning doesn't look like she is intelligent but that the author is spoon feeding her the answers. In many ways, she is far worse than Carl yet we are supposed to root for her.
And Mercury happens to know everybody and do everything and it's jarring. Honestly, I don't get Mercury. Not as an angel or as an unmotivated worker, but in why he is so competent? Why he is so capable when everybody is literally drones?
So this is a bland novel that tries to be deep but it fails miserable. It doesn't say anything new, doesn't have an interesting premise and the characters are barely constructed.
But if you are new into this settings, this is a great way to start. Is light, is inoffensive and it doesn't force to anything too hard that it could not be enjoyable for a, say airport wait or when you need to rest for other readings.