Saturday Night

If I could be doing anything at all here in Prague tonight, it would be curling up on the couch under a blanket, drinking wine from the bottle and watching A Fistful of Dollars with the volume up too loud. That will be difficult, logistically speaking, as I don’t have the movie.

The writing is going well, too.

The Descent – let’s wrap this up.

Part three of my review of this book.

OK, to start, if I was editor of The Descent, I would have put a big message on the top of the manuscript, that just said, “Hey! Who knew what when?” Then I would have tagged a few choice examples and sent it back to the author. People are nearly simultneously theorizing that the bad guys are extinct and lamenting that there are no good specimins to study because mobs tear them apart.

Eventually, I gave up on the details. I was able to just shrug off the inconsistencies and enjoy the ride. It wasn’t so much suspension of disbelief as a conscious choice to just let the details slide and get on with the story. Resupply in the tunnels? OK, whatever. For some reason the ocean chooses not to come down the holes. For some reason people in an unmapped labyrinth can reach prearranged locations. Fine. I’ll tolerate it because other strange things are happening that are really interesting, and I’ll focus my attention on those things. Why do the bad guys hold Ali the Hot Nun in such high regard? Is Branch nuts? Holy crap! A doomsday device! (It says something about the intricate world this takes place in that those are NOT spoilers.) And the bad guys themselves – they are awesome.

Normally I wouldn’t put up with the crap. When I find myself in a book like that I can easily set it aside. It’s a compliment to the writer, then, that I still found the story worth reading. It’s got the Devil in it, and he’s not a nice guy. When he murders someone, he makes it poetic. Yet, as I mentioned above, he’s got some competition this time around. There are good guys hunting him, and bad guys hunting him too.

I’m glad I read this book. Do I recommend it? I guess that depends on you. Are you one of those people who sits in a movie and annoys your friends pointing out the technical problems? Then no, this book is not for you. Are you the one who wants to hit the guy who’s talking about the technical problems and says, “Who cares, asshole? The hadals are coming!” then this story could work for you.

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