The Deading by Nicholas Belardes
The Deading
Again I need to preface this review with an acknowledgement of this being written while I am under the gun of some deadlines so this might not get the attention some books get.
It should be noted that I root for every book. Ecological horror is one of my greatest fears and passions. A book with this passage…“Now we rise. Now it’s us. In the name of Emma Goldman & Frida Kahlo, we rise. In the name of Jane Austen & Mary Shelly. In the name of Octavia Butler, in the name of Patti Smith whose songs tell us to pray screaming.” Should win me over. I wish I could say that it did.
There is some really fantastic writing at times. Some cool ideas, but this was a case ¾ of the way through I started to wonder if I was missing something. I wondered If the book was out smarting me. I decided to peep the reviews on Goodreads. This book has a 2.6 rating and I get that. I hesitate to beat up on a book already doing poorly but I think this novel is making few mistakes that could’ve been avoided.
The comps on the cover are Under the Dome and the Last of Us. Sure there are people trapped in a small isolated town and there is a fungus virus but the thing from Last of Us this novel needed was strong characters. After closing the book I didn’t remember a single character. The prologue matched the title, but not the tone of the rest of the book. The most interesting chapter (number 26 which I dog eared to go back to) was not from a character's POV but from a omnipresent WE. It started “We remember the day our city was on the news, many weeks ago now a memory…” that highlighted the problem that stretches of chapters the POV felt like mystery, it was on purpose at times it left this reader feeling confused and needing an anchor.
I don’t mind asides, but a great amount of the word count of this book goes into stuff about bird watching. I don’t hate bird watching, and probably had a higher tolerance for these chapters, I suspect one reason the rating are low is that horror readers who have a membership to the American Bird Watching Association is a small Venn Diagram. The novel also had some repetitive prose. I would give the author another shot, He seemed to be shooting for an artistic vibe, but needed a little more grounding in basic commercial storytelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment