Shadoweyes

Almost done. Just a few pages. So I decided I would just cut to the chase and review it now, because I'll be done this weekend, and I don't want to have to think about it. I highly doubt the last few chapters can save this one.

The prose is mostly serviceable. Until you hit an action scene; then it's awful and awkward. Or, if you hit a scene that is supposed to ramp up suspense and terrify you. Then it's just hokey and over-wrought. There is nothing notable in her prose. It isn't lovely or particularly compelling.

Now, I was interested in the setting, New Mexico, since I have never been there and would quite like to go someday. I was also interested in the Native American mythology motif, and the racial tension in the Southwest. But since the writing is so mediocre, there is no power in any of it. It is merely awkward.

This novel follows certain horror novel tropes of the 70s and 80s, and I think those tropes suck. I've read a number of novels from that period, and I rarely, if ever, like them. They are weak stories with badly drawn characters and stupid twists.

I also really hate the two lead women in this. They both bang Chato fairly quickly, and we're supposed to believe through Ptacek's lack of compelling buildup, that both women are pretty into him, if not in love. And I found her handling of Laura and Sunny to be fairly sexist. This might change; I suspect not. Laura is a career women, apparently a liberated woman–educated, smokin' hot, pampered. Sunny is apparently a prostitute, but she's a tough, Cool Girl who doesn't scream at every little thing like Laura. I'm fine with her being a sex worker. But Ptacek pits these two women against each other, at odds, and they are there mostly for Chato to have the hots for and bang. They are objects for him to use, only existing in relation to him for the duration of the story.

I also felt like any of the Native American social commentary was forced, but that might be because this books sucks so badly. Chato keeps doing things and going places that end up being pointless for him to do, so nothing really works in this book. I can't expect social commentary to work in something so poorly organized and so vapid.

I was pumped about this book–a female horror writer writing about Native American mythology, about the Southwest. But because I was so pumped, my hatred is even deeper than it otherwise would have been. No, this book were crap.

I finished it officially earlier this evening. Oh, no, it sucked. What a sad disappointment. OH, WELL, HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!!