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I meant to add this to the list of books I mentioned yesterday, but for some unfathomable reason, I totaly forgot I had read this one, and I finished it just a few days ago, no less.
Remember what I said yesterday about feeling that the supernatural elements of _Big Machine_ seemed as if they had been grafted on? I'm beginning to think that this is actually a trend. The idea is to take an otherwise nongenre narrative which contains no other hints at anything supernatural occuring within the story and then take a random supernatural element--ghosts, angels, whatever--and kind of crazy glue one onto the other.
Definitely do not spend a lot of time integrating the supernatural elements into the otherwise mainstream story: think of it as a hit and run supernatural fiction event.
So, yes, there are ghosts in _Alive in Necropolis_ and yes, only the protagonist can see them and yes, he has taken a number of blows to the head so he may just be hallucinating, but otherwise, this story does that thing which a lot of mainstream fiction aiming for a literary prize does: it sets up some characters who are so boring that the author has to emotionally torture them constantly in order to get them to do anything interesting.
And the characters all suffer from Wile E. Coyote syndrome, since it isn't as if the characters ever learn from their mistakes and say, oh, last time I picked up that stick of dynamite with the lit fuse it blew up in my face, maybe I shouldn't pick up lit sticks of dynamite. No, they each repeat their mistakes a few times so that you, as the reader, think Oh hey, they've learned their lesson, they won't go picking up sticks of dynamite again.
But no. See, that's the big plot twist :the characters do *precisely the same thing again*.
Yes, I definitely was not expecting that.
So yes, the cat dies, the kid dies, anyone who might have a chance as a couple either abandons or betrays their potential partner, and at the end the protagonist goes off to live with his mom in Tahiti.
This book was an Amazon Best of the Month book for July 2008, and I have no idea why.
I'm kind of curious about the use of supernatural elements stuck onto otherwise mainstream fiction, though. This reminds me of the Preston and Child Pendergast series, which I admit to being a guilty pleasure of mine. Only that actually has an interesting protagonist (even if his type of supernatural detective has been around for a hundred years) who meets other eccentric characters and solves murders (though it's never that difficult to figure out who did it in a Preston and Child book: just look for 1. a disabled person, 2. a professional woman, or 3. someone with a Latino name). I refer to these books as mainstream gothics--they take on just enough of the trappings of the gothic to titillate but never fully commit to the supernatural.
Remember what I said yesterday about feeling that the supernatural elements of _Big Machine_ seemed as if they had been grafted on? I'm beginning to think that this is actually a trend. The idea is to take an otherwise nongenre narrative which contains no other hints at anything supernatural occuring within the story and then take a random supernatural element--ghosts, angels, whatever--and kind of crazy glue one onto the other.
Definitely do not spend a lot of time integrating the supernatural elements into the otherwise mainstream story: think of it as a hit and run supernatural fiction event.
So, yes, there are ghosts in _Alive in Necropolis_ and yes, only the protagonist can see them and yes, he has taken a number of blows to the head so he may just be hallucinating, but otherwise, this story does that thing which a lot of mainstream fiction aiming for a literary prize does: it sets up some characters who are so boring that the author has to emotionally torture them constantly in order to get them to do anything interesting.
And the characters all suffer from Wile E. Coyote syndrome, since it isn't as if the characters ever learn from their mistakes and say, oh, last time I picked up that stick of dynamite with the lit fuse it blew up in my face, maybe I shouldn't pick up lit sticks of dynamite. No, they each repeat their mistakes a few times so that you, as the reader, think Oh hey, they've learned their lesson, they won't go picking up sticks of dynamite again.
But no. See, that's the big plot twist :the characters do *precisely the same thing again*.
Yes, I definitely was not expecting that.
So yes, the cat dies, the kid dies, anyone who might have a chance as a couple either abandons or betrays their potential partner, and at the end the protagonist goes off to live with his mom in Tahiti.
This book was an Amazon Best of the Month book for July 2008, and I have no idea why.
I'm kind of curious about the use of supernatural elements stuck onto otherwise mainstream fiction, though. This reminds me of the Preston and Child Pendergast series, which I admit to being a guilty pleasure of mine. Only that actually has an interesting protagonist (even if his type of supernatural detective has been around for a hundred years) who meets other eccentric characters and solves murders (though it's never that difficult to figure out who did it in a Preston and Child book: just look for 1. a disabled person, 2. a professional woman, or 3. someone with a Latino name). I refer to these books as mainstream gothics--they take on just enough of the trappings of the gothic to titillate but never fully commit to the supernatural.
