bearteddington's review
1.0
Normally, I only give 1 star reviews to books I don't finish, but this is maybe 1.5 stars? I didn't hate it enough to put it down, but it was rough enough that two stars still seemed a little high.
This book really suffered from its editing; it was full of punctuation problems (commas at the end of sentences instead of periods; weird, run-on sentences that went nowhere; missing punctuation), wrong homophones (peak instead of peek was everywhere) and even cut off mid-sentence at the end of The Predators, The Prey. I saw someone say it looked like this was a first draft that got published (accidentally?), and I agree. There were way too many errors that were gross oversights to be just? Okay or easy to overlook.
The pacing for each story was completely wrong, also; I didn't care what happened to any of the characters because there wasn't any time to develop any of them. For instance, in Billy (the first story), the "twist" gave me whiplash. It was like two pages in that, and then a page later and then it flips right to the third thing, and ends super abruptly and without any actual impact. There's no punch to any of the endings.
Most of the endings just? Come at the wrong place, and they don't make sense, because the narration is so muddled and confused with a lot of poor word choice ("he proceeded to continue" is one that stuck out in particular; "'It sure is beautiful here,' she smiled" -- SAID IS NOT DEAD. PLEASE.) that really should have been brought to task. So much of horror is about very clean, precise word choice, purposeful sentence structure, and being able to really work through descriptions without telling, and this book wasn't able to deliver on any of those fronts. There were some good ideas in the stories (like ugh ugh ugh a ghost??? psychic?? i'm not even sure tbh) compelling a man to eat himself alive which was pretty cool, but again, the solid ideas were just not fruitful because the writing was all over the place.
The characters all began to blend together, because the stories all had basically the same opening "He/she/I was doing something," and then a paragraph later we get a name. I had to stop and look back to the title of the story I was reading a number of times because I forgot if I had moved on to a new one already or not. The repetition of knives and the same twists really made it difficult to differentiate one story from another, which also made it hard to get into characters or feel anything for their outcomes.
There was no commitment in the writing; things "seemed like" they were something, or it was "almost as if" they were another thing. The added word count took away from the punchy effect horror should have. I don't want something that seems like it's doing something scary, I want something that is blatantly and unrepentantly doing something that is scary. If there's room for error (which is what "seems like" implies), then what consequences are there? What reason do I have to fear for the character? If the character has doubts about the situation they're going into wrt their own safety, why should I, an outside observer, give two wet farts about what's going on?
And because the writing was so unpolished, I honestly couldn't tell you what actually happened in at least half the stories; some of them were pretty obvious and not difficult, but especially the ones that wanted to bring in the supernatural or psychological elements, I didn't get like. "Frantic and disjointed thinking of a mentally ill person" (ala The Telltale Heart), I got completely confused about what was actually happening, who it was happening to, why it was happening, and what consequence it would actually have if it happened. I feel like the author needs to explore more with tightening his technical skills before taking on a project like this again, because the tone of each story was also exactly the same, which, like I said above, lead to everything blending together and not having any kind of lasting impact or any sense of spookiness.
And for a book that's defining madness as having to do with mental illness, none of the stories really had anything to do with mental illness? A few were cliche Hollywood crazy where anyone who's mentally ill will obviously leap on you and start stabbing without rhyme or reason, but even as a mentally ill person I couldn't be offended because it was just so? Ridiculous? Only the last story stumbled across anything relating to actual, real mental illness, where it humanized institutionalized inmates who joked about how crazy they are, and talked about some of their coping mechanisms and vented about not being taken seriously because of their status (and had the newly incarcerated? patient feeling dread about not being taken seriously, not being believed, having her experiences and reality brushed aside because she's mentally ill) -- that's something that's real and an authentic experience that pretty much every mentally ill person has ever gone through. But I don't know if it was actually on purpose that the book humanized the characters and gave them real fears or just an accident that it included them, because the book was so stuck on wanting its readers to fear the experience of being mentally ill. Well, that is one of the scary parts: neurotypical people don't listen to what you have to say. So good job there, book. I'd like to believe you actually did that on purpose.
It just feels like everything about this book was rushed, but after it was delayed (by "storms and terrorist attacks" etc according to one of the author's tweets) it seems like it should have really gotten more tender care to fix at least the most blatant issues, if not the technical writing or plot. So idk. Author seems like a nice guy but this is. Hoo.
This book really suffered from its editing; it was full of punctuation problems (commas at the end of sentences instead of periods; weird, run-on sentences that went nowhere; missing punctuation), wrong homophones (peak instead of peek was everywhere) and even cut off mid-sentence at the end of The Predators, The Prey. I saw someone say it looked like this was a first draft that got published (accidentally?), and I agree. There were way too many errors that were gross oversights to be just? Okay or easy to overlook.
The pacing for each story was completely wrong, also; I didn't care what happened to any of the characters because there wasn't any time to develop any of them. For instance, in Billy (the first story), the "twist" gave me whiplash. It was like two pages in that
Spoiler
Billy's mother said Billy was an imaginary friendSpoiler
Billy is like "your mom's dead!!!!"Most of the endings just? Come at the wrong place, and they don't make sense, because the narration is so muddled and confused with a lot of poor word choice ("he proceeded to continue" is one that stuck out in particular; "'It sure is beautiful here,' she smiled" -- SAID IS NOT DEAD. PLEASE.) that really should have been brought to task. So much of horror is about very clean, precise word choice, purposeful sentence structure, and being able to really work through descriptions without telling, and this book wasn't able to deliver on any of those fronts. There were some good ideas in the stories (like ugh ugh ugh a ghost??? psychic?? i'm not even sure tbh) compelling a man to eat himself alive which was pretty cool, but again, the solid ideas were just not fruitful because the writing was all over the place.
The characters all began to blend together, because the stories all had basically the same opening "He/she/I was doing something," and then a paragraph later we get a name. I had to stop and look back to the title of the story I was reading a number of times because I forgot if I had moved on to a new one already or not. The repetition of knives and the same twists
Spoiler
("ha ha! nothing is real! you're just crazy!" or "ha ha! you have been stabbed!" or "ha ha! you have stabbed someone!")There was no commitment in the writing; things "seemed like" they were something, or it was "almost as if" they were another thing. The added word count took away from the punchy effect horror should have. I don't want something that seems like it's doing something scary, I want something that is blatantly and unrepentantly doing something that is scary. If there's room for error (which is what "seems like" implies), then what consequences are there? What reason do I have to fear for the character? If the character has doubts about the situation they're going into wrt their own safety, why should I, an outside observer, give two wet farts about what's going on?
And because the writing was so unpolished, I honestly couldn't tell you what actually happened in at least half the stories; some of them were pretty obvious and not difficult, but especially the ones that wanted to bring in the supernatural or psychological elements, I didn't get like. "Frantic and disjointed thinking of a mentally ill person" (ala The Telltale Heart), I got completely confused about what was actually happening, who it was happening to, why it was happening, and what consequence it would actually have if it happened. I feel like the author needs to explore more with tightening his technical skills before taking on a project like this again, because the tone of each story was also exactly the same, which, like I said above, lead to everything blending together and not having any kind of lasting impact or any sense of spookiness.
And for a book that's defining madness as having to do with mental illness, none of the stories really had anything to do with mental illness? A few were cliche Hollywood crazy where anyone who's mentally ill will obviously leap on you and start stabbing without rhyme or reason, but even as a mentally ill person I couldn't be offended because it was just so? Ridiculous? Only the last story stumbled across anything relating to actual, real mental illness, where it humanized institutionalized inmates who joked about how crazy they are, and talked about some of their coping mechanisms and vented about not being taken seriously because of their status (and had the newly incarcerated? patient feeling dread about not being taken seriously, not being believed, having her experiences and reality brushed aside because she's mentally ill) -- that's something that's real and an authentic experience that pretty much every mentally ill person has ever gone through. But I don't know if it was actually on purpose that the book humanized the characters and gave them real fears or just an accident that it included them, because the book was so stuck on wanting its readers to fear the experience of being mentally ill. Well, that is one of the scary parts: neurotypical people don't listen to what you have to say. So good job there, book. I'd like to believe you actually did that on purpose.
It just feels like everything about this book was rushed, but after it was delayed (by "storms and terrorist attacks" etc according to one of the author's tweets) it seems like it should have really gotten more tender care to fix at least the most blatant issues, if not the technical writing or plot. So idk. Author seems like a nice guy but this is. Hoo.
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