verkisto's review
1.0
Oh my God, this is the worst book I've ever read. And I've read Son of Rosemary!
The prose to these stories is flat and unemotional. The characters aren't even one-dimensional, if that's even possible. Every story is nothing but telling and cliches, reduced to nothing but excuses to shock with the most depraved ideas James could imagine.
I mean, one of the stories is about a guy who trades a baby for drugs, but there's no examination of the characters there to make it worthwhile. In the end, the mother goes to the dealer with a gun and tells the guy, "You have my baby, I want him back", and the drug lord is all, "Oh, man, that's fucked up, we never should have done that, here, take him back", and that's it. There's no point to this story. There's no point to ANY of these stories.
The stories all feel immature, like they're written by a thirteen-year-old who just wants to shock and titillate. In one story, he has a character who's supposed to be in love with this woman, and to show how much this character loves her, he has the guy masturbate to a picture of her, like this is the highest compliment he could give her. It's just ... what?
James is also fond of flashbacks. Damn near every story has one, and he fits them in like a kid hammering a cube block into a round hole.
Oh, speaking of geometry, one of the lines is, "He aimed the pistol at one of his platinum DISCS [records] on another wall and blasted the shiny SPHERE" (emphasis mine).
I got angry as I was reading this book, it was so bad. I'm offended by it, not by its content, but by the fact that this was ever actually published. All I can figure is Guns N' Roses were huge at the time, and one of the stories is the basis for the "November Rain" video (which is mentioned on the cover of the damn book, because even the marketing department was like, "How else are we going to sell this shit?").
Don't read this book. Even as a hate-read, it's not worth it.
Abyss #45
The prose to these stories is flat and unemotional. The characters aren't even one-dimensional, if that's even possible. Every story is nothing but telling and cliches, reduced to nothing but excuses to shock with the most depraved ideas James could imagine.
I mean, one of the stories is about a guy who trades a baby for drugs, but there's no examination of the characters there to make it worthwhile. In the end, the mother goes to the dealer with a gun and tells the guy, "You have my baby, I want him back", and the drug lord is all, "Oh, man, that's fucked up, we never should have done that, here, take him back", and that's it. There's no point to this story. There's no point to ANY of these stories.
The stories all feel immature, like they're written by a thirteen-year-old who just wants to shock and titillate. In one story, he has a character who's supposed to be in love with this woman, and to show how much this character loves her, he has the guy masturbate to a picture of her, like this is the highest compliment he could give her. It's just ... what?
James is also fond of flashbacks. Damn near every story has one, and he fits them in like a kid hammering a cube block into a round hole.
Oh, speaking of geometry, one of the lines is, "He aimed the pistol at one of his platinum DISCS [records] on another wall and blasted the shiny SPHERE" (emphasis mine).
I got angry as I was reading this book, it was so bad. I'm offended by it, not by its content, but by the fact that this was ever actually published. All I can figure is Guns N' Roses were huge at the time, and one of the stories is the basis for the "November Rain" video (which is mentioned on the cover of the damn book, because even the marketing department was like, "How else are we going to sell this shit?").
Don't read this book. Even as a hate-read, it's not worth it.
Abyss #45
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