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A review by avalonenigma
Symphony by Charles L. Grant
3.0
The construction of this book was all over the place, there were far too many characters and too many of these were uninteresting to me and the were moments when I felt like someone had torn pages from my (digital) copy just to confuse me.
I have read this author before and I find his prose to be simple and at times compelling, but I am most familiar with him as an editor to quite a few anthonlogies I read growing up. This is surprising as its the editing of Syphony that really seems to let it down the most, taking out those unnecessary characters and putting more emphasis on the lead four would have been a real push for this book; for me - in fact - putting the emphasis on the group of "villains" and their mission would have been a more interesting angle.
The core of the story revolves around Casey, a small time preacher who can perform miracles and is destined to be the foil for Death - one of the Four Horsemen - but for me Casey is underwritten and somewhat uninteresting. He follows the tired old "man of faith who loses his faith" plotline and we never really learn the whys and wheres of it all.
I didn't dislike Casey, but he was a secondary character and not the lead needed to perform a beat-down on Death itself and it never seemed to occur to him (or the author) that in doing so he was doing not the work of his God, but the work of the Devil; I mean, wasn't the Apocalypse ordained by God in the first place?
This is one of the questions that Syphony sidesteps and it weakens the book for it to do so.
There is a far more interesting story here. One of a man of God, a man of faith, who loses his faith because he finds he has to oppose his God's will to unleash the Apocalypse.
I mean thats a story I'd like to read.
I have read this author before and I find his prose to be simple and at times compelling, but I am most familiar with him as an editor to quite a few anthonlogies I read growing up. This is surprising as its the editing of Syphony that really seems to let it down the most, taking out those unnecessary characters and putting more emphasis on the lead four would have been a real push for this book; for me - in fact - putting the emphasis on the group of "villains" and their mission would have been a more interesting angle.
The core of the story revolves around Casey, a small time preacher who can perform miracles and is destined to be the foil for Death - one of the Four Horsemen - but for me Casey is underwritten and somewhat uninteresting. He follows the tired old "man of faith who loses his faith" plotline and we never really learn the whys and wheres of it all.
I didn't dislike Casey, but he was a secondary character and not the lead needed to perform a beat-down on Death itself and it never seemed to occur to him (or the author) that in doing so he was doing not the work of his God, but the work of the Devil; I mean, wasn't the Apocalypse ordained by God in the first place?
This is one of the questions that Syphony sidesteps and it weakens the book for it to do so.
There is a far more interesting story here. One of a man of God, a man of faith, who loses his faith because he finds he has to oppose his God's will to unleash the Apocalypse.
I mean thats a story I'd like to read.