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A review by paulabrandon
So Cold the River by Michael Koryta
2.0
Eric Shaw was on the cusp of a big Hollywood career as a director of photography, but it fell apart. Now he does stuff like edit together presentations for funerals. At one such funeral, his work attracts the attention of a woman who wants him to put together something for her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, who is close to death.
She gives him a mysterious bottle of mineral water that her father-in-law built his fortune on. Eric heads to West Baden, the location of a magnificent hotel, to start work on his presentation. He notices that the bottle of mineral water is mysteriously cold all the time. Once at the hotel, and after taking a taste of the water, he starts experiencing vicious headaches and strange visions. As he tries digging into Campbell Bradford's past, he begins to realise not everything is adding up.
This got off to a good start.
Eric's visions and his encounters with a mysterious man in a bowler hat were evocative, creepy and unsettling. He was a well-developed character. So too was Josiah Bradford, a local yokel eager to strike it rich and get out of West Baden, who has a connection to Campbell Bradford that he's unaware of. Josiah is highly unlikeable as a character, but he remained interesting. Eric was an interesting character. So too was Kellen Cage, a college graduate exploring the black history of West Baden.
Not so interesting was local Anne McKinney, a storm watcher. I got really, really tired of her blathering on about storms. And the book just hammers home that "a storm is coming" metaphor with all the subtlety of a brick. This book is over 500 pages long, and I swear about 250 of them were taken up with talk about storms.
And that's how the book eventually lost me. All the goodwill generated by the spooky encounters early in the book was slowly but surely sapped away but the endless talk about storms and that all too obvious metaphor, and the fact that the book just didn't seem to be going anywhere. Eric got bad headaches a lot. It was clearly related to his consumption of the mineral water. He would get visions. He would get more headaches. Anne would blather on and on and on about storms. Rinse and repeat.
And after all that build-up, it just goes out with a whimper. We have no idea what Campbell Bradford sought to achieve once he was back. By the end, we're left with more questions than answers. Things just seem to resolve because the author seemed to realise he was 450 pages in and needed to wrap things up. It is one of the most underwhelming finishes to a horror tale I've ever encountered in my life.
This was very well-written. It kept me involved. The character development was top-notch. But for a 500 page book, barely anything happened. There's plenty of creepy stuff early on, but the second half really is largely a bore. None of what happens gets explained away to a degree that would satisfy me. I was surprised to learn that a movie version is coming out in March. I'm actually interested in watching it. This plot would be much more suited to a 90 minute movie than a 500 page book.
She gives him a mysterious bottle of mineral water that her father-in-law built his fortune on. Eric heads to West Baden, the location of a magnificent hotel, to start work on his presentation. He notices that the bottle of mineral water is mysteriously cold all the time. Once at the hotel, and after taking a taste of the water, he starts experiencing vicious headaches and strange visions. As he tries digging into Campbell Bradford's past, he begins to realise not everything is adding up.
This got off to a good start.
Eric's visions and his encounters with a mysterious man in a bowler hat were evocative, creepy and unsettling. He was a well-developed character. So too was Josiah Bradford, a local yokel eager to strike it rich and get out of West Baden, who has a connection to Campbell Bradford that he's unaware of. Josiah is highly unlikeable as a character, but he remained interesting. Eric was an interesting character. So too was Kellen Cage, a college graduate exploring the black history of West Baden.
Not so interesting was local Anne McKinney, a storm watcher. I got really, really tired of her blathering on about storms. And the book just hammers home that "a storm is coming" metaphor with all the subtlety of a brick. This book is over 500 pages long, and I swear about 250 of them were taken up with talk about storms.
And that's how the book eventually lost me. All the goodwill generated by the spooky encounters early in the book was slowly but surely sapped away but the endless talk about storms and that all too obvious metaphor, and the fact that the book just didn't seem to be going anywhere. Eric got bad headaches a lot. It was clearly related to his consumption of the mineral water. He would get visions. He would get more headaches. Anne would blather on and on and on about storms. Rinse and repeat.
And after all that build-up, it just goes out with a whimper. We have no idea what Campbell Bradford sought to achieve once he was back. By the end, we're left with more questions than answers. Things just seem to resolve because the author seemed to realise he was 450 pages in and needed to wrap things up. It is one of the most underwhelming finishes to a horror tale I've ever encountered in my life.
This was very well-written. It kept me involved. The character development was top-notch. But for a 500 page book, barely anything happened. There's plenty of creepy stuff early on, but the second half really is largely a bore. None of what happens gets explained away to a degree that would satisfy me. I was surprised to learn that a movie version is coming out in March. I'm actually interested in watching it. This plot would be much more suited to a 90 minute movie than a 500 page book.