Book Semi-Reviews
May. 23rd, 2012 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkAKA thoughts on books that I didn't finish.
Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler
I picked this book up because (1) I'm a sucker for stories about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (hello, Darksiders!), and (2) I'm starting to research cutting and self-injury for my own project. Rage isn't a bad book; the language is poetic in a lot of places (though I feel that Kessler overused the word "kiss" for inanimate objects), and I think it does a good job of tackling its subject matter in a compassionate way. Why didn't I finish it? Because frankly I couldn't see where the plot was going. In the middle, the book lost a lot of steam, and it's not clear what Missy's specific duties as the Rider of War were. While there was an emotional arc revolving around her cutting and horrendous treatment by her high school peers, there didn't seem to be a story about the Horsemen.
I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
I'm a sucker for these types of books. I liked Jazz as a protagonist, with all his awesomeness and simultaneous insecurities, and I thought the characters and world felt real. I loved the exploration of Jazz's childhood with his dad, and the boatload of psychological problems he's left with, as well as his constant agony about whether he's a sociopath or not, and whether he's moral or acting just like a serial killer. To be honest, I'm a little puzzled as to why I felt like putting the book down. Like with Rage, I thought this novel lost a lot of steam in the middle. I think it might be because there was a lack of external conflict. While Jazz agonizes over how everyone sees him as a serial killer in the making, there's not really any indication that that's the case. In fact, I would even say most of his worrying is entirely in his own head. Moreover, I felt that the reason for why Jazz is intent on tracking down the serial killer wasn't strong, considering that he had to do a lot of semi-illegal things and got in trouble every time he tried to "help" the police. If the book showed more residents ostracizing Jazz, perhaps that would have given more of a sense of urgency to his task.
To borrow an idea I read from somewhere else (I believe from James Scott Bell's excellent Plot and Structure): I always felt that Jazz could just walk away from investigating the serial killer and nothing bad would happen to him, except maybe that the police wouldn't catch the killer (but that wouldn't really affect Jazz personally). Bizarrely enough for a murder mystery, the stakes didn't seem high enough.
Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler
I picked this book up because (1) I'm a sucker for stories about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (hello, Darksiders!), and (2) I'm starting to research cutting and self-injury for my own project. Rage isn't a bad book; the language is poetic in a lot of places (though I feel that Kessler overused the word "kiss" for inanimate objects), and I think it does a good job of tackling its subject matter in a compassionate way. Why didn't I finish it? Because frankly I couldn't see where the plot was going. In the middle, the book lost a lot of steam, and it's not clear what Missy's specific duties as the Rider of War were. While there was an emotional arc revolving around her cutting and horrendous treatment by her high school peers, there didn't seem to be a story about the Horsemen.
I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
I'm a sucker for these types of books. I liked Jazz as a protagonist, with all his awesomeness and simultaneous insecurities, and I thought the characters and world felt real. I loved the exploration of Jazz's childhood with his dad, and the boatload of psychological problems he's left with, as well as his constant agony about whether he's a sociopath or not, and whether he's moral or acting just like a serial killer. To be honest, I'm a little puzzled as to why I felt like putting the book down. Like with Rage, I thought this novel lost a lot of steam in the middle. I think it might be because there was a lack of external conflict. While Jazz agonizes over how everyone sees him as a serial killer in the making, there's not really any indication that that's the case. In fact, I would even say most of his worrying is entirely in his own head. Moreover, I felt that the reason for why Jazz is intent on tracking down the serial killer wasn't strong, considering that he had to do a lot of semi-illegal things and got in trouble every time he tried to "help" the police. If the book showed more residents ostracizing Jazz, perhaps that would have given more of a sense of urgency to his task.
To borrow an idea I read from somewhere else (I believe from James Scott Bell's excellent Plot and Structure): I always felt that Jazz could just walk away from investigating the serial killer and nothing bad would happen to him, except maybe that the police wouldn't catch the killer (but that wouldn't really affect Jazz personally). Bizarrely enough for a murder mystery, the stakes didn't seem high enough.
