1. Premise 8
2. Prose 8
3.
Plot 7
4.
Characters 9
5.
Overall 8
Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)
I have intended to read L’Amour’s books - my paternal grandfather’s favorite books - for many, many years, putting it off due to a prejudice against Westerns. (Where did that prejudice come from? Like most prejudices with which we afflict ourselves, I have no idea; though I sort of suspect it’s related to my aversion to country music!) This book got good reviews but, avoiding spoilers out of habit, I didn’t look at the subject matter – oops. It’s not a Western! But it is a pretty cool Suspense/Mystery/Detective/Sci-Fi/Fantasy blend that is right in line with what I usually like to read. The writing is solid; I kind of expected that, although the protagonist seems to need to rehash events and conclusions in his head a bit too extensively, and we are obliged to suffer through it with him. There’s a lot of filler going over the same old questions – whetting our appetites for the conclusion? If so, it’s done pretty clumsily. You get the feeling that the author went back over the manuscript after finishing it and added text here and there in order to make sure his usual Western-novel readers were “gittin all these here new-fangled idears.” Actually, my instinct suggests that this was done at the request of a heavy-handed editor. Whatever the reason, it sure slows down an otherwise well-constructed story. Who knew that L’ Amour had written such an H. G. Wells type book?? I guess his loyal readers knew; that’s who. It completely turns on its head my previous impression of this very interesting author.
No comments:
Post a Comment