Scan barcode
A review by errantdreams
The Dollmaker by Amanda Stevens
1.0
Amanda Stevens’s The Dollmaker uses post-Katrina New Orleans as its colorful backdrop. Its characters are moderately interesting but not terribly surprising nor unusual.
The plot is relatively good, although it didn’t have that taut, down-to-the-wire feel of a truly good thriller. The mysteries weren’t deep, and there was little question in my mind as to how things would end. The tension wasn’t drawn out very well.
The part that actively annoyed me, however, is that yet again we’re given a view of someone with ‘non-standard’ sexuality as a psychopathic deviant. The fact that the psychopathy stems from how the character was treated is really incidental–the seat of the problem remains the character’s unorthodox sexuality. This has become a cheap way to manufacture psychos in thrillers, and it’s doing a real disservice to those people who don’t quite fit society’s view of ‘normal’.
All in all The Dollmaker was okay, but that last issue soured it for me. This book was published in 2012, well past the point where authors should know better; that’s enough to drop this book from a 2.5 out of 5 in my eyes to a 1 out of 5.
Visit my site for a longer version of this review including premise: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/08/review-the-dollmaker-amanda-stevens/
The plot is relatively good, although it didn’t have that taut, down-to-the-wire feel of a truly good thriller. The mysteries weren’t deep, and there was little question in my mind as to how things would end. The tension wasn’t drawn out very well.
The part that actively annoyed me, however, is that yet again we’re given a view of someone with ‘non-standard’ sexuality as a psychopathic deviant. The fact that the psychopathy stems from how the character was treated is really incidental–the seat of the problem remains the character’s unorthodox sexuality. This has become a cheap way to manufacture psychos in thrillers, and it’s doing a real disservice to those people who don’t quite fit society’s view of ‘normal’.
All in all The Dollmaker was okay, but that last issue soured it for me. This book was published in 2012, well past the point where authors should know better; that’s enough to drop this book from a 2.5 out of 5 in my eyes to a 1 out of 5.
Visit my site for a longer version of this review including premise: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/08/review-the-dollmaker-amanda-stevens/