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A review by noachoc
Awakened by James S. Murray, Darren Wearmouth
2.0
Full disclosure: I was sent a free advance copy of this in exchange for reviewing it here (even fuller disclosure: part of my soul was all "THEY'RE SENDING ME FREE BOOKS NOW! I'VE MADE IT BIG"). I think, though, that the only way this is going to influence my review is by making me go into a bit more detail than I would have otherwise.
This book is okay. I'm going to get the caveat out of the way ahead of time: I don't read a lot of modern horror, so I'm not that familiar with the genre. I do, however, watch a lot of horror movies.
This book felt like the authors wanted it to be a movie. It dripped "PLEASE PICK ME, HOLLYWOOD". It felt like a movie pitch, and that irritated me, because if I'm reading a book, I want character development and creeping horror. I don't want a scene where a monster slowly snips the buttons off a woman's shirt. That's irritating. You know what else was irritating? Because it felt so much like a movie, I started noticing how poorly it was doing on the Bechdel test. It takes until (and I don't have the copy with me, but I'll check when I get home, something like page 173 (EDIT: I checked when I got home and it was page 171) before two women speak to one another. Also, the women characters are few and token. You get the Here-Is-A-Badass-Woman, which I appreciate, it's GOOD to have a badass woman. It kinda sucks though when there's only one of them. You also get Somebody's Wife and Somebody's Assistant and A Passel of Victims, and those are your women right there. Everyone else is a dude.
I AM SO TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT. I can make excuses for that kind of thing in science fiction from the seventies, but I'm not going to stand for it in something written this year.
I was also annoyed by how the characters' romantic relationships are used, like Hawkeye's surprise family in Avengers, to make you care if they die or not, rather than actually giving the characters any actual depth or likeability. You don't want this guy to die because he's just started trying to fix his marriage! You don't want this woman to die because she's just agreed to let the guy try to fix their marriage!
Also. Why Nazis? Why did it have to be Nazis (at least tangentially) behind everything? Like, you can have a shady global organization and NOT have them be founded by a Nazi. It would have been a lot better had it not been Nazis, because that would have left some interesting ambiguity about the motives of the shadowy organization. Sure! Their methods are perhaps a little shady but they are PROTECTING THE WORLD FROM THE MONSTERS so maybe it's worth it! That is a useful thing to have the reader questioning. Is it worth certain sacrifices in order to protect the bulk of humanity? Is blackmail 0kay if the money is used to protect the world? WELL NOT IF IT'S NAZIS. As SOON as you throw Nazis in there, you lose all of the interesting subtlety.
And I think that's what my review boils down to. This book wants to be a movie, and it wants to be the kind of jump-scare action-horror movie that doesn't take the time to explore subtleties.
And it's really too bad.
AND GIVE ME BETTER WOMEN, GODDAMN.
This book is okay. I'm going to get the caveat out of the way ahead of time: I don't read a lot of modern horror, so I'm not that familiar with the genre. I do, however, watch a lot of horror movies.
This book felt like the authors wanted it to be a movie. It dripped "PLEASE PICK ME, HOLLYWOOD". It felt like a movie pitch, and that irritated me, because if I'm reading a book, I want character development and creeping horror. I don't want a scene where a monster slowly snips the buttons off a woman's shirt. That's irritating. You know what else was irritating? Because it felt so much like a movie, I started noticing how poorly it was doing on the Bechdel test. It takes until (and I don't have the copy with me, but I'll check when I get home, something like page 173 (EDIT: I checked when I got home and it was page 171) before two women speak to one another. Also, the women characters are few and token. You get the Here-Is-A-Badass-Woman, which I appreciate, it's GOOD to have a badass woman. It kinda sucks though when there's only one of them. You also get Somebody's Wife and Somebody's Assistant and A Passel of Victims, and those are your women right there. Everyone else is a dude.
I AM SO TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT. I can make excuses for that kind of thing in science fiction from the seventies, but I'm not going to stand for it in something written this year.
I was also annoyed by how the characters' romantic relationships are used, like Hawkeye's surprise family in Avengers, to make you care if they die or not, rather than actually giving the characters any actual depth or likeability. You don't want this guy to die because he's just started trying to fix his marriage! You don't want this woman to die because she's just agreed to let the guy try to fix their marriage!
Also. Why Nazis? Why did it have to be Nazis (at least tangentially) behind everything? Like, you can have a shady global organization and NOT have them be founded by a Nazi. It would have been a lot better had it not been Nazis, because that would have left some interesting ambiguity about the motives of the shadowy organization. Sure! Their methods are perhaps a little shady but they are PROTECTING THE WORLD FROM THE MONSTERS so maybe it's worth it! That is a useful thing to have the reader questioning. Is it worth certain sacrifices in order to protect the bulk of humanity? Is blackmail 0kay if the money is used to protect the world? WELL NOT IF IT'S NAZIS. As SOON as you throw Nazis in there, you lose all of the interesting subtlety.
And I think that's what my review boils down to. This book wants to be a movie, and it wants to be the kind of jump-scare action-horror movie that doesn't take the time to explore subtleties.
And it's really too bad.
AND GIVE ME BETTER WOMEN, GODDAMN.