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Dread of Night
Jul. 21st, 2012 09:03 pmI enjoyed Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston? so much that I thought I would see what was available in eBook format. Dread of Night (2009) is a satire about American responses to disaster bookended by a detective thriller.
Unfortunately there were numerous problems with the actual eBook. As Smashwords is a self serve publisher, they couldn't help me. The table of contents didn't work right on my Kobo, there were concatenated words, missing words and mashed text to name a few. I gave up reading after "supposed topals asshole" because I couldn't stand the problems and couldn't figure out what a topal was ("to be pals").
Layering characters straight from hard boiled detective novels with contemporary, 21st century society did not make a good mash up. The two grinded together painfully, particularly character names and actions. The detective part had me until the disaster part kicked in.
The pacing was painfully slow, as if the book didn't know what it wanted to be. With so much telling, Dread of Night comes across as a poorly written genre novel. In a 24/7 news environment, it's not necessary to go into long descriptions of disaster aftermaths. Readers don't need to be excessively told what they look like. And it's what is left out, oddly enough that makes the disasters less believable. It's a shame because the intricate plot had a lot of promise.
However, I can really praise Greenan's sense of place. He describes Boston very well and I found that added to the story.
Unfortunately there were numerous problems with the actual eBook. As Smashwords is a self serve publisher, they couldn't help me. The table of contents didn't work right on my Kobo, there were concatenated words, missing words and mashed text to name a few. I gave up reading after "supposed topals asshole" because I couldn't stand the problems and couldn't figure out what a topal was ("to be pals").
Layering characters straight from hard boiled detective novels with contemporary, 21st century society did not make a good mash up. The two grinded together painfully, particularly character names and actions. The detective part had me until the disaster part kicked in.
The pacing was painfully slow, as if the book didn't know what it wanted to be. With so much telling, Dread of Night comes across as a poorly written genre novel. In a 24/7 news environment, it's not necessary to go into long descriptions of disaster aftermaths. Readers don't need to be excessively told what they look like. And it's what is left out, oddly enough that makes the disasters less believable. It's a shame because the intricate plot had a lot of promise.
However, I can really praise Greenan's sense of place. He describes Boston very well and I found that added to the story.
