I’m keeping this review on my website and not leaving it on Goodreads because it’s likely to be longer than what Goodreads wants. It is also going to have SPOILERS in it. Also, I want to retain control, own it and have it be totally mine, much the same as many of the things on my website. I want to be able to come back to this later. Using a website run by someone else, particularly something like a Goodreads, there’s no guarantee that I can come back to this later. By later I mean it could be next week, next year, or 5 years from now. Saying Goodreads will be there or accessible in the way that it is now (particularly since it’s in the realm of Amazon now) is a risk.
This book was a selection (by me – more on that soon) for Watch The Skies.
Description:
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
Apology first – I’m sorry. That description? That’s what I saw, and it’s listed as ‘fantasy’. Old fashioned sword and sorcery (right, wrong or indifferent) has been lumped in with science fiction and is part of what we pick for our reading list. Goodreads presented this as dark fantasy. Let’s call them flexible about what categorization they use for where this book fits. It was presented as dark fantasy and the description didn’t contain anything about time frame or setting (or didn’t specifically state modern versus quasi-medieval). It could be implied modern by way of having college students, but I’ve read many portal fantasy stories involving college kids. This formed my expectation. I expected some kind of traditional portal fantasy where characters from the book end up going through a portal into some sort of fantasy world that contains the dragon touted in the description.
Nothing in the original description of the book puts it in a modern horror with fantasy elements category. It was pointed out to me it is a portal fantasy, just not in the direction I was expecting. The portal was just headed in the other direction. And the story was filled with horror.
The starting point then, is this book didn’t meet my expectations. Right out the gate, I’m not happy. That is not necessarily someone’s fault, or more accurately, that is a marketing thing. They made the sale. I definitely blame the book companies for that.
The other piece of the puzzle is… and this is my fault… I had no idea who the author was when I picked it. I didn’t understand who Joe Hill is, and definitely didn’t realize that Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son. If I had known that I would have expected something closer to what Stephen King writes. Modern horror. That would have affected my expectation. Because they didn’t present it that way, and I didn’t know, that’s how I get to the choice. That’s the book selection and the overall ‘how I got here’ portion of this (which I think is probably very rambly). As for the story itself there were a couple of pieces that I want to cover.
First, it’s unclear who the protagonist is. There’s one protagonist at the beginning, or maybe Arthur is our protagonist, except that he’s killed about two-thirds of the way through the book. In fact, almost the entire group of people you might consider protagonists die. This is a horror eliminator movie. That’s the best analogy I can come up with. The sort of horror film where you have a group of people the only question is how many die before the end of the book. Even the Alien series had Ripley. Strike one.
Second, in a piece where the protagonist is unclear, shouldn’t the antagonist stand out? Be particular or unique? Not here. The antagonist is unclear as well. The initial thought is the dragon. Turns out the dragon may or may not be real and is essentially just a weapon. The antagonist is actually one of the members of the college student group who are being eliminated. I say that that’s the case, that he’s the antagonist, but he dies before the end too. Hero or anti-hero does not apply to any of them. They are a whole stack of gray areas who mostly die. That could be okay, even though not my favorite, except it’s hard to find a particular person to identify with. The point of view character changes from book to book. This monster volume is made up of smaller books. The point of view changes depending on which part of the book you’re in. I struggle with that under some circumstances, but this is on top of already not meeting my expectations. Strike two.
While I thought fantasy (aka sword and sorcery), this was modern day America. The events mixed into the story included terrorist attacks and bombings and all of the sort of things that I don’t want when I’m going to read for entertainment. If I’m reading fantasy (or anything other than the news) I don’t want it to be filled with the news! Another piece that bothers me is that while the book is set over a number of decades, a lot of those news events were things from my lifetime, things that I was aware of as an adult. I remember the Oklahoma City bombing. I don’t find it fiction worthy. Not interested. Strike three.
Trying to balance out the negative a little, I think the characters were very real. They were believable. They weren’t as likable as I would hope, but they were real. The portion of the book where the twins taken by a vague but menacing government agency was quite real feeling. It should have been shorter, but it was real enough.
At well at over 800 pages this just took so much time. I couldn’t file it to DNF, it was *my* pick. I did want to know what happened. Wanting the outline or idea of what happens wasn’t enough and meant I was not enthusiastic about dragging myself through that many pages. IF you’re thinking of picking this one up, understand that it’s a modern horror doorstop (daunting at best). The characters are strong, but not likable. The vague but menacing government agency is just as scary as the monster. I should have done better doing my homework before I got to part where I picked this.
Lastly, I do think this could work if made into a movie or a limited series. I would be interested in seeing how they do this on film, who the actors would be that they pick and how they’d handle the dragon. There’s a lot of potential there. There are a number of very visual aspects of this that would play really well on screen. Maybe something will come of it ~ I know they have adopted other works from Joe Hill. Locke and Key and Black Phone come to mind. I suppose more positive reviews would help move something to the screen, but I’m sure the author will be just fine without me.
