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alfboyreads 's review for:
The Woodkin
by Alexander James
i went into this book without many expectations and i guess it delivered on that front? i did not get much out of this one except maybe some spooky hiking vibes. first and foremost, it was really quite well written which a lot of the times is enough to save even the most mediocre of storyline. this writer knows how to Write, no overwriting of anything which is very much a perk! but the whole thing is just So anticlimactic, from the early middle all the way to the very end. the beginning was promising, all the uneasy feelings you get when you click on a youtube video about dissapearances on an appalachia hiking trail (even though this book is set in the pnw, but not the point), quite atmospheric but god, just as soon as the action hit there was a definite anticlimax of the whole thing and i so wish it had more pay off.
the theme of trauma was utilised clumsily and far too gratuitously, with no room left for the audience to interpret or chew on the central theme at all. i found that only time the writing itself left something to be desired was when describing the actual monsters of the book, it didn't feel quite visceral enough; weirdly the descriptions of hiking felt more hard hitting and visceral than the Monster.
i find that the feral cannibal people in the woods story is quite overdone and so hard to do in a unique and effective way, and even with combining it with the sort of ghostly, non corporeal, possession element of it, it still felt a little recycled to me. i think if the writer had fleshed out the woodkin people a little more and given them their own personalities, dialogue, and more motive than just writing The Feast, it would have felt creepier. the writer definitely did a good job of making the small town scenes in the diner thoroughly creepy and gave them a solid uncanny valley feeling to them, so i wish that would have been carried on to the forest scenes.
i also felt myself just glaze over the very final big moment where the mc is overcoming the childhood trauma that has shadowed him the whole book and i thought that was a pretty bad sign; that should have felt like the most gripping moment of the book and hard to look away from but it was the opposite. and again, the entire direction the writer took with this trauma was very kicking a dead horse, bash you over the head with it. i think it didnt help that the main character was quite milquetoast and not unlikeable but not interesting either.
i did however, love old man appletree profoundly, what a good little oldtimer.
very solid writing but easy to glaze over during the most important bits... dissapointing.
the theme of trauma was utilised clumsily and far too gratuitously, with no room left for the audience to interpret or chew on the central theme at all. i found that only time the writing itself left something to be desired was when describing the actual monsters of the book, it didn't feel quite visceral enough; weirdly the descriptions of hiking felt more hard hitting and visceral than the Monster.
i find that the feral cannibal people in the woods story is quite overdone and so hard to do in a unique and effective way, and even with combining it with the sort of ghostly, non corporeal, possession element of it, it still felt a little recycled to me. i think if the writer had fleshed out the woodkin people a little more and given them their own personalities, dialogue, and more motive than just writing The Feast, it would have felt creepier. the writer definitely did a good job of making the small town scenes in the diner thoroughly creepy and gave them a solid uncanny valley feeling to them, so i wish that would have been carried on to the forest scenes.
i also felt myself just glaze over the very final big moment where the mc is overcoming the childhood trauma that has shadowed him the whole book and i thought that was a pretty bad sign; that should have felt like the most gripping moment of the book and hard to look away from but it was the opposite. and again, the entire direction the writer took with this trauma was very kicking a dead horse, bash you over the head with it. i think it didnt help that the main character was quite milquetoast and not unlikeable but not interesting either.
i did however, love old man appletree profoundly, what a good little oldtimer.
very solid writing but easy to glaze over during the most important bits... dissapointing.