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A review by sisteray
The Dark Volume by Gordon Dahlquist
2.0
1656680 I am so angry.
The first book is wonderful, and I couldn't wait to dig into this. But as much as I wanted to love this I just can't, why because it Dahlquist didn't do his job.
If there is any real flaw in the first book is that Dahlquist loved his characters too much, here it feels like he stopped caring about them entirely. He doesn't know what to do with them and they just wander around aimlessly. Half the book is solely dedicated to them moping. The spirit of high adventure is gone, now it is an empty shell. The book is just morose awash in pathetic self pity. Blech!
Where the first book is packed with story, this book is weakly maintained by an under-arching plot, that pokes its nose in occasionally, to remind you that perhaps something might actually be happening.
Where the first book contains a story this book is a protracted denouement. It is like he stopped caring about his original characters, didn't really know what to do, and out of desperation resorted to exploring tertiary characters that he desperately wanted to make interesting.
What he needed to do was to write a new story and throw his characters in the mix. Rather than try to tie up loose ends for 800 pages.
The book is riddled with coincidence and randomly stumbling onto dramatically important and obscenely hidden elements mistakenly constantly throughout this book. So the characters never make any real decisions.
Once he finally brings everyone together they just stand around and look at each other. Ray Harryhausen talks about how when working on the giant octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea he only gave it 6 tentacles, because he didn't want to have to do the work to keep the other two tentacles moving. Here Dahlquist feels obligated to throw a bunch of characters in (because that's what he does?) that he just doesn't want to put the effort into moving around. At a certain point he just randomly kills them, seemingly just to cease the bother.
This book does have some great moments in it occasionally, but you have to slog through to get to them. Unfortunately, these moments are at about halfway through and start a downhill ride to the last dreadful 100 pages.
All the inventiveness and fantasy is just regurgitated (which btw also is a recurring theme) with nothing new or exciting to add. He created a fun world and did nothing with it.
It is a bad sign when you are constantly counting the pages left to go in order to encourage continuing.
The first book is wonderful, and I couldn't wait to dig into this. But as much as I wanted to love this I just can't, why because it Dahlquist didn't do his job.
If there is any real flaw in the first book is that Dahlquist loved his characters too much, here it feels like he stopped caring about them entirely. He doesn't know what to do with them and they just wander around aimlessly. Half the book is solely dedicated to them moping. The spirit of high adventure is gone, now it is an empty shell. The book is just morose awash in pathetic self pity. Blech!
Where the first book is packed with story, this book is weakly maintained by an under-arching plot, that pokes its nose in occasionally, to remind you that perhaps something might actually be happening.
Where the first book contains a story this book is a protracted denouement. It is like he stopped caring about his original characters, didn't really know what to do, and out of desperation resorted to exploring tertiary characters that he desperately wanted to make interesting.
What he needed to do was to write a new story and throw his characters in the mix. Rather than try to tie up loose ends for 800 pages.
The book is riddled with coincidence and randomly stumbling onto dramatically important and obscenely hidden elements mistakenly constantly throughout this book. So the characters never make any real decisions.
Once he finally brings everyone together they just stand around and look at each other. Ray Harryhausen talks about how when working on the giant octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea he only gave it 6 tentacles, because he didn't want to have to do the work to keep the other two tentacles moving. Here Dahlquist feels obligated to throw a bunch of characters in (because that's what he does?) that he just doesn't want to put the effort into moving around. At a certain point he just randomly kills them, seemingly just to cease the bother.
This book does have some great moments in it occasionally, but you have to slog through to get to them. Unfortunately, these moments are at about halfway through and start a downhill ride to the last dreadful 100 pages.
All the inventiveness and fantasy is just regurgitated (which btw also is a recurring theme) with nothing new or exciting to add. He created a fun world and did nothing with it.
It is a bad sign when you are constantly counting the pages left to go in order to encourage continuing.