This ends up being a decent enough horror novel, but I have to give it some demerits for being such a slog to get through the first half-plus; the main character is just overwhelmingly passive and uninteresting--though it's clear she's dealing with some sort of fractured, possibly divergent brain-thing, and being interesting and/or active isn't really something she's wired for. I don't know enough about the various kinds of Chinese folklore woven into this to comment on that, other than using stuff that's sovereign against one thing against something entirely else does not seem to be ... a thing likely to work. Toward the end, when the main character and the ghosts she's interacting with set out to do something about the serial killer (and some terrifying number of copycats) killing East Asian people in New York City, the book takes a turn that reminded me more than a little bit of Everett's The Trees, if perhaps a little less apocalyptic (this is not snark). The writing is ... OK, I guess, the Caucasian folks sound different from the Chinese people, but that's as far as the differentiation between/among them goes; there are occasional flashes of wit, but the prose mostly just kinda sits there. The pacing is really slack for a long time but does tighten up some late.
No comments:
Post a Comment