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natcassidy 's review for:
The Auctioneer
by Joan Samson
This is really more of a 3.5 for me. I think I've been spoiled by books like NEEDFUL THINGS, which I read before reading THE AUCTIONEER. Both books share a lot of ingredients, but where King's book is a dopey popcorn thriller full of proactive, restless characters, Samson's is a horror story of insinuation and gossip and social pressure, with very little motivation given for the events that unfurl other than pride and "this is what we're expected to do." Even the few violent events that start to ratchet up the pressure to participate in the auctions are received second-hand and accepted immediately as inducement--there's very little fight and there aren't many fireworks, plot-wise. Our protagonists get wrapped up in the darkness more out of passivity than anything. That passivity is well evoked, arguably far more realistic, and certainly richer thematically than the chain of explosives depicted in the-devil-comes-to-town narratives like NEEDFUL THINGS, but as a *novel* I found THE AUCTIONEER to be underwhelming.