Scan barcode
A review by billymac1962
The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman
3.0
It's October and time for some horror reads!
I was pretty excited going into this one. Horror is a genre that has lost me recently. There just doesn't seem to be anything out there that fits my particular tastes.
I'm all about strong character development and psychological suspense when it comes to this genre. Something that will unsettle me, wriggle under my skin, and stick in my head long after I've finished it. So few can deliver it for me, unfortunately. But I never give up.
This author has been flitting into my radar for quite a while now. Once October hit I was looking for something to hit the bill and The Lesser Dead came up in a review that seemed right up my alley: vampires in the NYC subway, promising a new take on the legend. Now, anytime I hear anything about a new take on the vampire legend, Brian Lumley's brilliant Necroscope series immediately comes to mind, so The Lesser Dead had some big shoes to fill. Note, in no way was this novel promoted as a contender to that, and in no way does it resemble that series. I don't know where I'm going with this, other than I've seen the best that can be done for vampires, so this better be good.
And it started off very good indeed. Huge kudos for setting this in the decade of my formative years, the 70s, and enormous kudos for Joseph attending one of the legendary Led Zeppelin shows at MSG and fantasizing over the things he'd do to Robert Plant. I was a Zeppelin freak growing up, and despite my being a heterosexual guy, my man-crush on Robert Plant damn near busted some boundaries. I mean, you can't blame anyone for this can you? Robert Plant a la 1973 was the quintessential rock god. I will fight anyone on this.
Anyhow, suffice it to say that this section of the book won me over to the point where I was able to overlook anything negative for a good third of the novel.
However, I had some issues as the chapters went on.
For about half of this novel, each chapter would bring new characters in. By the time I was halfway through, I had a really hard time differentiating them.
Also I had issues with the pacing in general. The narrative would frequently stop moving forward for backstory on this or that, and while I usually like that, it just seemed to jar the flow for me. It didn't help that at this point I was having difficulty with the number of characters, so I was already a little frustrated. Leaving the present timeline didn't help.
Towards the end there was a considerable amount of chasing, fighting and action of the sort that frankly makes my eyes glaze over. This is a shortcoming of mine, not the book.
I was really in the mood for something with a slow burn and a deeper psychological aspect and this book wasn't it.
I don't blame the book for being what it was, but the last half didn't work for me very well. It's no fault of the book, just me as a reader and what I like.
So take these three stars as something I recommend to those who would like the style. Read some other reviews (as I should have) and if it looks like something you'd dig, by all means you likely will. I did like a lot of the things he did for this story, and I am not disinclined to read him again. I have just added Between Two Fires to my to-read list.
I was pretty excited going into this one. Horror is a genre that has lost me recently. There just doesn't seem to be anything out there that fits my particular tastes.
I'm all about strong character development and psychological suspense when it comes to this genre. Something that will unsettle me, wriggle under my skin, and stick in my head long after I've finished it. So few can deliver it for me, unfortunately. But I never give up.
This author has been flitting into my radar for quite a while now. Once October hit I was looking for something to hit the bill and The Lesser Dead came up in a review that seemed right up my alley: vampires in the NYC subway, promising a new take on the legend. Now, anytime I hear anything about a new take on the vampire legend, Brian Lumley's brilliant Necroscope series immediately comes to mind, so The Lesser Dead had some big shoes to fill. Note, in no way was this novel promoted as a contender to that, and in no way does it resemble that series. I don't know where I'm going with this, other than I've seen the best that can be done for vampires, so this better be good.
And it started off very good indeed. Huge kudos for setting this in the decade of my formative years, the 70s, and enormous kudos for Joseph attending one of the legendary Led Zeppelin shows at MSG and fantasizing over the things he'd do to Robert Plant. I was a Zeppelin freak growing up, and despite my being a heterosexual guy, my man-crush on Robert Plant damn near busted some boundaries. I mean, you can't blame anyone for this can you? Robert Plant a la 1973 was the quintessential rock god. I will fight anyone on this.
Anyhow, suffice it to say that this section of the book won me over to the point where I was able to overlook anything negative for a good third of the novel.
However, I had some issues as the chapters went on.
For about half of this novel, each chapter would bring new characters in. By the time I was halfway through, I had a really hard time differentiating them.
Also I had issues with the pacing in general. The narrative would frequently stop moving forward for backstory on this or that, and while I usually like that, it just seemed to jar the flow for me. It didn't help that at this point I was having difficulty with the number of characters, so I was already a little frustrated. Leaving the present timeline didn't help.
Towards the end there was a considerable amount of chasing, fighting and action of the sort that frankly makes my eyes glaze over. This is a shortcoming of mine, not the book.
I was really in the mood for something with a slow burn and a deeper psychological aspect and this book wasn't it.
I don't blame the book for being what it was, but the last half didn't work for me very well. It's no fault of the book, just me as a reader and what I like.
So take these three stars as something I recommend to those who would like the style. Read some other reviews (as I should have) and if it looks like something you'd dig, by all means you likely will. I did like a lot of the things he did for this story, and I am not disinclined to read him again. I have just added Between Two Fires to my to-read list.