The Fall: The Rift Book I
Brainycat's 5 "B"s:blood: 4
boobs: 0
bombs: 2
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 1
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL
I only made it through 32% of this book before I gave up on it. The pace of the writing seemed like it plodded along unchanged, no matter if the protagonist was unleashing demons from ancient tombs or eating dinner with his parents. The story is written in multiple third persons, I suppose to try and show the enormity of the unfolding zombiepocalypse, but none of the characters felt fully developed. Reading it felt like listening to one of those shows on public radio where the host interviews a number of people in depth around some vaguely related inane topic - a lot of words about straight white people on the east coast of the US I don't know and can't be arsed to care about.
The plot relied on a number of flashback scenes. In my reader, these showed up as page after page of bold, italic paragraphs expositing some scenario that lacked context, probably attempting to make the scene spooky and magnificient, but actually only heightening the sense that I'm just here to Watch A Writer Write instead of experiencing the end of the world as we know it firsthand. It was during one of these episodes that I closed the file and opened another book.
I soldiered on long after I wanted to give up. I was looking for the gratuitous sex and violence mentioned by Jennifer but it didn't happen fast enough for me. Maybe I missed it? Maybe Jennifer has different ideas about gratuitousness, harsh language, sex and violence than I do. Either way, while some interesting things happened to uninteresting characters, it was too little too late and I have too much on my TBR list to suffer through a story I'm not enjoying.
Rather than one-starring this like the rest of my DNFs, I'm going to give this one two stars. As harshly as I trashed it in preceeding paragraphs, it's still not as bad as the swill that I usually DNF. It's ambitious, utilizes a decent vocabulary and someone bothered to run it through a spellchecker. I think this could be an OK book for someone with different tastes and expectations. However, if you like the same books I do, you'll want to avoid The Fall.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
