A review by tregina
Darkness Falling by Peter Crowther
2.0
When I'm having to force myself to the end of a book, I know something's not working for me. And this should have worked for me, it has all the ingredients of a book I'll like. Instead it read like a cut-rate Stephen King (and I like King) with the flow of its internal dialogue, and random shit and fart jokes that go on a little too long.
I spent the first two thirds of the book feeling like it was all set-up, and the last third wondering what the hell was going on as the Heroes Assembled, and there as no payoff for me at the end because it turned out to all be setup for the as-yet-unpublished second book in the series. Everything took too long, and with a couple of exceptions, I never got a solid sense of character: every time I saw a new name I had to try to figure out who the hell that was again, and the reactions to this abrupt change in reality never come across as at all realistic. It was also lacking a strong sense of place; the generic 'American' setting was peppered with moments of British idiom that kept making me question if I was even remembering the setting right.
The worst part for me was that I could tell it was something that, if done a little differently, I would like a whole lot. I'm still wanting it to be that book.
I spent the first two thirds of the book feeling like it was all set-up, and the last third wondering what the hell was going on as the Heroes Assembled, and there as no payoff for me at the end because it turned out to all be setup for the as-yet-unpublished second book in the series. Everything took too long, and with a couple of exceptions, I never got a solid sense of character: every time I saw a new name I had to try to figure out who the hell that was again, and the reactions to this abrupt change in reality never come across as at all realistic. It was also lacking a strong sense of place; the generic 'American' setting was peppered with moments of British idiom that kept making me question if I was even remembering the setting right.
The worst part for me was that I could tell it was something that, if done a little differently, I would like a whole lot. I'm still wanting it to be that book.