nocto

This series seems to revolve less and less around mystery as it goes on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it can get a bit bemusing at times.

I spent the first half of this book enjoying what was going on (gun fights, bear attacks, engines falling out of the sky) but waiting for the main mystery to break. In the second half I just got on with enjoying it and didn't worry about it. In retrospect there is a murder in the book and it is solved but the proportion of page space taken up by this compared to the other sub plots isn't what I was expecting. It's an interesting book but it didn't quite all come together for me.

I found this book to be more of a character study of Kate than a plot centred book. It's more of a case of presenting Kate with various situations, people, and surroundings and seeing how she copes with them. As such I think it may move the series on to be rounder and deeper than it was before especially as I mainly read these books for the characters and the scenery anyway. This is definitely not a book to read out of order, if you're starting in on this series you'd get a better taste of it by reading one of the earlier more plot orientated books first.

Purchased on 20th May 2002.

If ever there was a book I should have thrown at the wall this was it. I was reading it for a mailing list discussion and didn't want to miss out on the discussion so I skim read most of it. More comments to follow....here there are, with spoilers

first impressions

My first impressions were that I didn't like the writer and this made me not like the characters too. I haven't finished the book and I'm not sure I will, I'm waiting for some one here to hurry up and give the end away so I don't feel I have to read on!

I didn't like Gale much but I think this is mostly explained by the fact that I found the prologue to be difficult to read and to understand what was going on. I quite liked Lisa to start with and thought she was the most three dimensional of the characters, that's one thing I did think the author did well, setting her up to be likable and then revealing another side to her as the story unfolded.

I don't really remember the other characters making an impression on me before the murder.

I found it a really hard book to get into and I found the local people using American idioms to be really annoying, I did think the writer had tried hard to get the locality right but there were too many little things that pulled me out of the story. I had to imagine the book was set in some alternate Hampshire somewhere in the mid-Atlantic to get anywhere with it and even then I skim read a lot of it.

Purchased on 15th October 2002.