Post by Taika of Narfell on Jan 6, 2007 5:22:15 GMT 1
Being no fan of his mother's Vampire Chronicles nor of her arrogance concerning her own writings it was with some trepidation that I picked up Christopher's book. It was a second-hand buy, very cheap, never read before, from the price-tag I deduce that it was bought in Munich airport; the buyer probably found that he had better things to do. Like for instance studying how much the decorative plants at the airport might grow while waiting for the flight.
Suffice to say, I am not impressed. The man clearly did not inherit his mother's imagination(while I don't like her writing all that much, I do respect her imagination a great deal).
It is a crime novel. Just the thing I need when I surface from my linguistics research once in a while. In a setting I'm familiar with; present-day earth, university campus. I may never have attended or lived at an American college, but I've seen, heard and read enough to have a preeeetty good idea - I should say it's hard to avoid. Trivia literature and I figured I'd get through it in a few days - I was right.
Sadly, it left me with a rather odd taste in my mouth (no, there's nothing wrong with my tea). The back cover blurb promises much but doesn't fulfil it - at all.
In said blurb they wrote:
"When a professor's wife is found drowned in an icy river, rumours of murder are rife within the walls of Atherton University. But then an older murder mystery emerges from the shadows as people recall the discovery of a corpse in a frozen creek some twenty years earlier and wonder whether the two might possibly be connected.
Three friends find themselves snared in a web of lies surrounding the murders: for each of them college had promised a bright future and a way to disconnect from a dark, haunted past, but - as winter sets in - their secret histories threaten to reveal themselves in nightmarish fashion. Snowbound on the university campus, Kathryn, Randall and Jesse are the unwitting capties of a malevolent force that drives them relentlessly towards the 'snow garden' of the title - a place of horrors that is all too real... and all too near."
Now, I'll be the first to admit that back cover blurbs are seldom trustworthy. Mainly because the author is usually asked to hand in that blurb long before he has even finished his manuscript, so I'm not in the habit of taking those blurbs as anything but a general idea of where he intended to go with the story rather than a detailed description of what I might find between the covers. This time the blurb failed me even in that.
The first thing I noticed in reading this book was that Rice was incredibly quickly introducing a horrid amount of special characters. Not that we have a lot of protagonists, we don't really, but right now I cannot think of a single reasonably normal person in that book. Not a single one. And while I know that on a college campus outsiders tend to flock together and suddenly be very visible with their respective oddities this was just too much.
I will now spoil the first 25 pages for you. Keep in mind that it's only 25 pages out of 400. On these 25 pages we are told all of the following things:
Randall is a flaming homosexual with rich parents who never call, his mother is also an alcoholic. He prefers Prada and Versace like a true stereo-typed gay person. He has written a short story containing suspiciously immense amounts of rage and destruction and wants no one but Kathryn to read it. Aside from all this he's sleeping around with one of his professors. A married professor who has yet to exit the closet at that. Kathryn is his best friend but even she doesn't know about his little affair.
Kathryn actually had a nightmare from reading Randall's short story. She is the regular loner girl, looks good, but she has a deep dark secret that makes her shy away from all human contact - except for Randall. Kathryn also seems to have an issue with her parents. She hates Jesse, Randall's room mate, because she dislikes the campus stud on principle.
Jesse is indeed the campus stud, gorgeous and swinging both ways, he gets anyone he wants but has no actual friends. He's a heartbreaker and surprisingly he, too, has an issue with his parents. His dad's a rich drunkard.
April is Kathryn's room mate. Our first meeting with April happens when she rushes through the door and is huffy about having gone to an African American Student Alliance meeting and being disappointed. The reason? She's half-Irish half-black so all the other black women hate her for being half-white and therefore having the opportunity to steal the black men. Nevermind that April is a lesbian. Whammo! All that info about an essentially insignificant character just like that. I never understood why we needed to know that April is half-Irish. It's completely irrelevant.
25 pages into the book, people. And I've probably forgotten several things.
The professor whose wife drowns is of course the same one Randall is fooling around with. Didn't take many a brainwave to figure that out before it's revealed. As such the basic plot is okay. The wife drives her car over the side of a bridge and drowns, officially she was on heavy meds and was a drunk so no one is really surprised that it happened.
Then starts a game of suspicion and attempts at revealing and framing people for all sorts of things. I will not reveal all the key players in the plot as that will reveal too much, and as I said, the plot is actually reasonably okay. Standard fare, but okay. My issue lies with all the weird characters.
The closet-case professor with the murdered wife, who was dating the girl who drowned in a creek on campus 18 years ago. Suspicious and weird.
The campus news paper reporter who's pining for the big scoop (in a campus paper... yeah, sure) but doesn't really want to investigate the drowned woman... And he's gay.
The girl with some suspected dark past who tuzzled with Jesse and has now turned lesbian.
The lesbian with the doe-eyes and volatile temper.
The TA who's possibly gay, possibly asexual... and definitely weird.
The constantly mentioned jetset architect an alumni of Atherton who has donated much to the university - we aren't really told much of him till very late in the book, but we know it's coming since his indirect presence is horribly conspicuous. Did I mention he's gay?
There's a cult with orgies and drugs, there's the 18 year old drowning turned urban legend and The Elms where it happened. And there's not a single bloody normal person in sight. Even the supporting cast are oddities, gay Taylor has Bible-thumper parents, the dead woman was on anti-depressants, her sister was a cancer case...
I don't mind that a book centres around a main character that is somehow special. Oftimes being different can be fine part of the plot and explain why this particular person *is* the main character. But this is just too extreme. Rice has gone so horribly overboard that it has become ridiculous.
There is no "malevolent force" as the blurb says - I didn't expect it, but after having read the book I know what 'force' it's referring to and it's a stupid reference, the one word betrayal would be more apt here. I still haven't quite figured out what the Snow Garden actually is. During the course of the book there is one specific place that I'd concluded was the Snow Garden, but towards the end there's a silly little twist that places the Snow Garden as something entirely different.
The writing itself is bland. Nothing to write home about. It's also a reminder that one should use a real proof-reader rather than trust MS Word's spell check. I can handle typos in printed books, they happen all the time and while it's not good for my impression of how serious the publisher took the work I can live with simple typos. But don't ever let me see a "he'd was" anywhere in a sentence. It simply must not happen.
I cannot critique the descriptions of New York, Boston, Atherton nor college life so I'll leave those alone, but the comment that the name Maria Klein should - in the combination of first and last name - show mixed origins is preposterous. Yes, Klein sounds German, the name Maria is also used in Germany. That combination shows exactly nothing, and Mr. Rice ought to do some research. If he meant to say that the girl probably has Germanic roots then say that. With her name she could well be 100% German since Maria is actually a Hebrew name and in modern usage not at all specific to any language, what with the famous Maria from approximately 2000 years ago.
Such a clever observation as 'clenching his jaw' leading to 'top teeth grating against his lower ones' is just outstanding. Gee, what else would his top teeth be grating against? His foot?!?!? Besides, clenching one's jaw is not the same as grinding one's teeth which would be necessary for the 'grating' to happen. It's just generally bad language. Mr. Rice doesn't attempt such visual descriptions very often and that's probably a good thing, 'cause when he does, he fails.
The three positive things I have to say about this book are: 1. The actual culprit(s) are not revealed till very late in the book, which is a thing I like about crime novels. I like to be part of the investigation and try to figure things out while reading. 2. It's a quick read and therefore it was only little time I wasted on it. 3. In all its failure to be a good crime novel it ends up being quite a hilarious piece of trash - so some amusement *was* gleaned after all.
My final verdict remains: If you want to see how a book should not be written this is a fine example. If you want to read a convincing crime novel - go elsewhere, because this is too ridiculous to be called a crime novel. It would fit better in the category called Parody.
Suffice to say, I am not impressed. The man clearly did not inherit his mother's imagination(while I don't like her writing all that much, I do respect her imagination a great deal).
It is a crime novel. Just the thing I need when I surface from my linguistics research once in a while. In a setting I'm familiar with; present-day earth, university campus. I may never have attended or lived at an American college, but I've seen, heard and read enough to have a preeeetty good idea - I should say it's hard to avoid. Trivia literature and I figured I'd get through it in a few days - I was right.
Sadly, it left me with a rather odd taste in my mouth (no, there's nothing wrong with my tea). The back cover blurb promises much but doesn't fulfil it - at all.
In said blurb they wrote:
"When a professor's wife is found drowned in an icy river, rumours of murder are rife within the walls of Atherton University. But then an older murder mystery emerges from the shadows as people recall the discovery of a corpse in a frozen creek some twenty years earlier and wonder whether the two might possibly be connected.
Three friends find themselves snared in a web of lies surrounding the murders: for each of them college had promised a bright future and a way to disconnect from a dark, haunted past, but - as winter sets in - their secret histories threaten to reveal themselves in nightmarish fashion. Snowbound on the university campus, Kathryn, Randall and Jesse are the unwitting capties of a malevolent force that drives them relentlessly towards the 'snow garden' of the title - a place of horrors that is all too real... and all too near."
Now, I'll be the first to admit that back cover blurbs are seldom trustworthy. Mainly because the author is usually asked to hand in that blurb long before he has even finished his manuscript, so I'm not in the habit of taking those blurbs as anything but a general idea of where he intended to go with the story rather than a detailed description of what I might find between the covers. This time the blurb failed me even in that.
The first thing I noticed in reading this book was that Rice was incredibly quickly introducing a horrid amount of special characters. Not that we have a lot of protagonists, we don't really, but right now I cannot think of a single reasonably normal person in that book. Not a single one. And while I know that on a college campus outsiders tend to flock together and suddenly be very visible with their respective oddities this was just too much.
I will now spoil the first 25 pages for you. Keep in mind that it's only 25 pages out of 400. On these 25 pages we are told all of the following things:
Randall is a flaming homosexual with rich parents who never call, his mother is also an alcoholic. He prefers Prada and Versace like a true stereo-typed gay person. He has written a short story containing suspiciously immense amounts of rage and destruction and wants no one but Kathryn to read it. Aside from all this he's sleeping around with one of his professors. A married professor who has yet to exit the closet at that. Kathryn is his best friend but even she doesn't know about his little affair.
Kathryn actually had a nightmare from reading Randall's short story. She is the regular loner girl, looks good, but she has a deep dark secret that makes her shy away from all human contact - except for Randall. Kathryn also seems to have an issue with her parents. She hates Jesse, Randall's room mate, because she dislikes the campus stud on principle.
Jesse is indeed the campus stud, gorgeous and swinging both ways, he gets anyone he wants but has no actual friends. He's a heartbreaker and surprisingly he, too, has an issue with his parents. His dad's a rich drunkard.
April is Kathryn's room mate. Our first meeting with April happens when she rushes through the door and is huffy about having gone to an African American Student Alliance meeting and being disappointed. The reason? She's half-Irish half-black so all the other black women hate her for being half-white and therefore having the opportunity to steal the black men. Nevermind that April is a lesbian. Whammo! All that info about an essentially insignificant character just like that. I never understood why we needed to know that April is half-Irish. It's completely irrelevant.
25 pages into the book, people. And I've probably forgotten several things.
The professor whose wife drowns is of course the same one Randall is fooling around with. Didn't take many a brainwave to figure that out before it's revealed. As such the basic plot is okay. The wife drives her car over the side of a bridge and drowns, officially she was on heavy meds and was a drunk so no one is really surprised that it happened.
Then starts a game of suspicion and attempts at revealing and framing people for all sorts of things. I will not reveal all the key players in the plot as that will reveal too much, and as I said, the plot is actually reasonably okay. Standard fare, but okay. My issue lies with all the weird characters.
The closet-case professor with the murdered wife, who was dating the girl who drowned in a creek on campus 18 years ago. Suspicious and weird.
The campus news paper reporter who's pining for the big scoop (in a campus paper... yeah, sure) but doesn't really want to investigate the drowned woman... And he's gay.
The girl with some suspected dark past who tuzzled with Jesse and has now turned lesbian.
The lesbian with the doe-eyes and volatile temper.
The TA who's possibly gay, possibly asexual... and definitely weird.
The constantly mentioned jetset architect an alumni of Atherton who has donated much to the university - we aren't really told much of him till very late in the book, but we know it's coming since his indirect presence is horribly conspicuous. Did I mention he's gay?
There's a cult with orgies and drugs, there's the 18 year old drowning turned urban legend and The Elms where it happened. And there's not a single bloody normal person in sight. Even the supporting cast are oddities, gay Taylor has Bible-thumper parents, the dead woman was on anti-depressants, her sister was a cancer case...
I don't mind that a book centres around a main character that is somehow special. Oftimes being different can be fine part of the plot and explain why this particular person *is* the main character. But this is just too extreme. Rice has gone so horribly overboard that it has become ridiculous.
There is no "malevolent force" as the blurb says - I didn't expect it, but after having read the book I know what 'force' it's referring to and it's a stupid reference, the one word betrayal would be more apt here. I still haven't quite figured out what the Snow Garden actually is. During the course of the book there is one specific place that I'd concluded was the Snow Garden, but towards the end there's a silly little twist that places the Snow Garden as something entirely different.
The writing itself is bland. Nothing to write home about. It's also a reminder that one should use a real proof-reader rather than trust MS Word's spell check. I can handle typos in printed books, they happen all the time and while it's not good for my impression of how serious the publisher took the work I can live with simple typos. But don't ever let me see a "he'd was" anywhere in a sentence. It simply must not happen.
I cannot critique the descriptions of New York, Boston, Atherton nor college life so I'll leave those alone, but the comment that the name Maria Klein should - in the combination of first and last name - show mixed origins is preposterous. Yes, Klein sounds German, the name Maria is also used in Germany. That combination shows exactly nothing, and Mr. Rice ought to do some research. If he meant to say that the girl probably has Germanic roots then say that. With her name she could well be 100% German since Maria is actually a Hebrew name and in modern usage not at all specific to any language, what with the famous Maria from approximately 2000 years ago.
Such a clever observation as 'clenching his jaw' leading to 'top teeth grating against his lower ones' is just outstanding. Gee, what else would his top teeth be grating against? His foot?!?!? Besides, clenching one's jaw is not the same as grinding one's teeth which would be necessary for the 'grating' to happen. It's just generally bad language. Mr. Rice doesn't attempt such visual descriptions very often and that's probably a good thing, 'cause when he does, he fails.
The three positive things I have to say about this book are: 1. The actual culprit(s) are not revealed till very late in the book, which is a thing I like about crime novels. I like to be part of the investigation and try to figure things out while reading. 2. It's a quick read and therefore it was only little time I wasted on it. 3. In all its failure to be a good crime novel it ends up being quite a hilarious piece of trash - so some amusement *was* gleaned after all.
My final verdict remains: If you want to see how a book should not be written this is a fine example. If you want to read a convincing crime novel - go elsewhere, because this is too ridiculous to be called a crime novel. It would fit better in the category called Parody.