A review by twitchyredpen
Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty
1.0
Well, it wasn't bad enough to DNF. But it certainly wasn't any good.
The outline and pacing are that of any cookie-cutter "protagonist finds a secret that powerful people want/want hidden; works covertly with powerful people on opposing side; optionally realizes something about self" book.
First half of book, establishing characters, expertise, and locations while the protagonist ignores obvious red flags/direct warnings from experts. Then the protag finds the secret and realizes what trouble he's in, leading him to secretly accept/seek out assistance from other powerful people while trying to save his own skin and seeing other people get killed. Ends with a creative "solution" that, on closer inspection by the reader, leaves problems for others and/or only kicks the protagonist's can down the road. I'm mentally benchmarking this book against my memories of Grisham's The Firm.
Based on author commentary tucked into my copy, I assume this book was written and published quickly to hop on the vampire money train. The book lacks the polish of having been picked over by beta readers, dev editors, or the insomniac/shower-pondering author. Protagonist has interesting skills but no interesting personality traits. There are sections of detailed observations that add nothing to the plot or to the experience. Accents are handled by having the characters' words written "normally" but with some words -- sohm verdz --pulled out and repeated as a pronunciation commentary, with every new accented character.
The fact-checking/fact-developing, yikes. I don't know my Transylvanian history; there's another review here on Goodreads going off about those errors. But early on, HIV is described as working by attacking a person's genes and editing out the immune system, and haha wow no. Several pages devoted to the internal anatomy of vampires when, frankly, it should have been handwaved. They're weakest shortly after full moon, okay, done. They're vampires; they are not improved by trying to apply science. And not trying to apply science to how they digest blood would have prevented that awful HIV explainer.
In problems that are not the author's fault: Line editing could have been better -- I was not reading for errors and I still found them -- and *proofing* could have been better, which is not a complaint I often have. Weird line-break hyphenations like rein-force were not corrected.
(This book was sent to my employer for review, along with inserted publicity materials. However, my employer does not do book reviews, so the book lay forgotten in a cupboard for years.)
The outline and pacing are that of any cookie-cutter "protagonist finds a secret that powerful people want/want hidden; works covertly with powerful people on opposing side; optionally realizes something about self" book.
First half of book, establishing characters, expertise, and locations while the protagonist ignores obvious red flags/direct warnings from experts. Then the protag finds the secret and realizes what trouble he's in, leading him to secretly accept/seek out assistance from other powerful people while trying to save his own skin and seeing other people get killed. Ends with a creative "solution" that, on closer inspection by the reader, leaves problems for others and/or only kicks the protagonist's can down the road. I'm mentally benchmarking this book against my memories of Grisham's The Firm.
Based on author commentary tucked into my copy, I assume this book was written and published quickly to hop on the vampire money train. The book lacks the polish of having been picked over by beta readers, dev editors, or the insomniac/shower-pondering author. Protagonist has interesting skills but no interesting personality traits. There are sections of detailed observations that add nothing to the plot or to the experience. Accents are handled by having the characters' words written "normally" but with some words -- sohm verdz --pulled out and repeated as a pronunciation commentary, with every new accented character.
The fact-checking/fact-developing, yikes. I don't know my Transylvanian history; there's another review here on Goodreads going off about those errors. But early on, HIV is described as working by attacking a person's genes and editing out the immune system, and haha wow no. Several pages devoted to the internal anatomy of vampires when, frankly, it should have been handwaved. They're weakest shortly after full moon, okay, done. They're vampires; they are not improved by trying to apply science. And not trying to apply science to how they digest blood would have prevented that awful HIV explainer.
In problems that are not the author's fault: Line editing could have been better -- I was not reading for errors and I still found them -- and *proofing* could have been better, which is not a complaint I often have. Weird line-break hyphenations like rein-force were not corrected.
(This book was sent to my employer for review, along with inserted publicity materials. However, my employer does not do book reviews, so the book lay forgotten in a cupboard for years.)