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A review by brandonotis
Red X by David Demchuk
3.0
Red X is good.
My problem is that it just wasn’t my favorite, I believe that David Demchuk is a good author, his abilities are on display in the book, I have no doubts about his skills. For me I found the narrative to just not be to my liking, the book’s chapters each end and begin with an 8-year gap, and while that is interesting, for me I felt like this made some of the characters feel hollow, I didn’t know much about them, and I only saw them for a scene or 2 every eight years. In almost every chapter I found myself having to go back and remind myself of who the characters were because I wasn’t able to fully grasp their names, I’ve never really had this happen before but for some reason this format didn’t let me connect with any of the characters. Maybe if the segments were a bit longer and we had more time to sit with the characters I wouldn’t mind as much, but as the book went on I found myself asking “why exactly is THIS moment so important to show?” some of the later chapters don’t really feel all that important for the characters from earlier in the book, and after the mystery of who or what the villain is gets told, you get all the information in one go, and then have 100 pages with no intrigue, because there is no character work, and the mystery has been solved.
The thing is, my “problems” with the book are just because I personally don’t care for this form of story, I’d rather have longer chapters between time jumps, and more focus on human characters and stories, rather than a focus on events occurring and mirroring a fairy tale. Its okay that the story is like that, it doesn’t make the writing bad or the story less effective, I just personally would’ve preferred the book if it went in a different direction, which it didn’t.
My problem is that it just wasn’t my favorite, I believe that David Demchuk is a good author, his abilities are on display in the book, I have no doubts about his skills. For me I found the narrative to just not be to my liking, the book’s chapters each end and begin with an 8-year gap, and while that is interesting, for me I felt like this made some of the characters feel hollow, I didn’t know much about them, and I only saw them for a scene or 2 every eight years. In almost every chapter I found myself having to go back and remind myself of who the characters were because I wasn’t able to fully grasp their names, I’ve never really had this happen before but for some reason this format didn’t let me connect with any of the characters. Maybe if the segments were a bit longer and we had more time to sit with the characters I wouldn’t mind as much, but as the book went on I found myself asking “why exactly is THIS moment so important to show?” some of the later chapters don’t really feel all that important for the characters from earlier in the book, and after the mystery of who or what the villain is gets told, you get all the information in one go, and then have 100 pages with no intrigue, because there is no character work, and the mystery has been solved.
The thing is, my “problems” with the book are just because I personally don’t care for this form of story, I’d rather have longer chapters between time jumps, and more focus on human characters and stories, rather than a focus on events occurring and mirroring a fairy tale. Its okay that the story is like that, it doesn’t make the writing bad or the story less effective, I just personally would’ve preferred the book if it went in a different direction, which it didn’t.