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A review by arkron
The Silver Spike by Glen Cook
2.0
This series definitively has got a starting problem in each book. The previous books needed 50 pages each to draw me in and made that up quite good.
It is different with this one, where I even started skipping pages after 100 pages - which I normally wouldn't do - the story was plain boring at times and I didn't have the feeling that I missed anything by skipping a few pages here and there.
Once again, Cook flips from sending his characters 1000s of miles from here to there every couple of pages. That was ok for the first one or two books to learn about the world. But right now, you don't learn anything new at all but revisit the same places just to return to the previous place.
And I have the impression that Cook hasn't got the timing right - going such fast distances takes lots of time - which we don't see passed in the narration at all.
The main narrator this time is Raven's friend Case who replaces Croaker role writing a kind of diary. Case's chapters' style might work for native English readers. But I'm not sure about that style: It seems like a silly trick with all it's wrong plural/singular forms and tenses. It somehow doesn't read ... true. They were really difficult to bear for me.
I don't know how long it would take to learn Darling's sign-language fluently. But Case needed only a couple of weeks to be able to discuss and argue in a perfect way. That felt like the wrong passing of time.
And there is the stand-up comedian troup of Tully and Smeds and the mysterious Old Bear. Their disorganised try of stealing the spike is so uncool, non-ocean's 11-style and foreign-embarrassing, that it's nearly good again. I liked the way Smeds' character changed and the role he became later on. But the whole story of those thieves seemed implausible.
Limper being game again is really great. I find his return as a scarecrow in a kind of horror faery style awesome. It remembers me of the "Candyman" movie (though I hate horror).
But in contrast to the other books, I found the showdown of this book quite lame and uninteresting. So, no upgrade this time.
It is different with this one, where I even started skipping pages after 100 pages - which I normally wouldn't do - the story was plain boring at times and I didn't have the feeling that I missed anything by skipping a few pages here and there.
Once again, Cook flips from sending his characters 1000s of miles from here to there every couple of pages. That was ok for the first one or two books to learn about the world. But right now, you don't learn anything new at all but revisit the same places just to return to the previous place.
And I have the impression that Cook hasn't got the timing right - going such fast distances takes lots of time - which we don't see passed in the narration at all.
The main narrator this time is Raven's friend Case who replaces Croaker role writing a kind of diary. Case's chapters' style might work for native English readers. But I'm not sure about that style: It seems like a silly trick with all it's wrong plural/singular forms and tenses. It somehow doesn't read ... true. They were really difficult to bear for me.
I don't know how long it would take to learn Darling's sign-language fluently. But Case needed only a couple of weeks to be able to discuss and argue in a perfect way. That felt like the wrong passing of time.
And there is the stand-up comedian troup of Tully and Smeds and the mysterious Old Bear. Their disorganised try of stealing the spike is so uncool, non-ocean's 11-style and foreign-embarrassing, that it's nearly good again. I liked the way Smeds' character changed and the role he became later on. But the whole story of those thieves seemed implausible.
Limper being game again is really great. I find his return as a scarecrow in a kind of horror faery style awesome. It remembers me of the "Candyman" movie (though I hate horror).
But in contrast to the other books, I found the showdown of this book quite lame and uninteresting. So, no upgrade this time.