anansi reviewed on
Helpful Score: 2
Wizard and Glass.... this is one murderously long book.
I'm a fan of the DT series, and I nearly ditched this 700pg beast at least 3 times while I plodded through it. The repetition is almost physically painful. About 300 pages are entirely unnecessary and do nothing to move the story forward, they - in fact - keep jerking it backwards in a one step forward, two steps back fashion.
Some have recommended reading a synopsis of the flashback section (which is 80% of the book, or so) - and I tend to agree with them. Its a shame, because a decent story is buried in there, but mining it out is torturous. In the afterward - Stephen King says he lost track of whether it was a good book or not about halfway through writing it. I say: No Shit.
Whomever his editors were on this outing did him no favors by not pointing out how he was holding his fan's feet in the fire.
All that said - you almost can't skip it in order to continue forward. This book bridges a long time away from the series for SK into the last years of its writing, which were executed in a comparable feverish speed (the author's brush with mortality rearranging his priorities somewhat).
I feel glad to be done with it. Very glad. I'm not happy with the resolutions, either. All involve vague magic and characters reappearing in overly-convenient ways. Please let the last 3 be much much better than this... I've more or less been saving them to enjoy, because I understand it won't last forever. Now I have no interest in parsing them out - because, while reading this book - the notion of the series lasting forever was hell on Earth.
I'm a fan of the DT series, and I nearly ditched this 700pg beast at least 3 times while I plodded through it. The repetition is almost physically painful. About 300 pages are entirely unnecessary and do nothing to move the story forward, they - in fact - keep jerking it backwards in a one step forward, two steps back fashion.
Some have recommended reading a synopsis of the flashback section (which is 80% of the book, or so) - and I tend to agree with them. Its a shame, because a decent story is buried in there, but mining it out is torturous. In the afterward - Stephen King says he lost track of whether it was a good book or not about halfway through writing it. I say: No Shit.
Whomever his editors were on this outing did him no favors by not pointing out how he was holding his fan's feet in the fire.
All that said - you almost can't skip it in order to continue forward. This book bridges a long time away from the series for SK into the last years of its writing, which were executed in a comparable feverish speed (the author's brush with mortality rearranging his priorities somewhat).
I feel glad to be done with it. Very glad. I'm not happy with the resolutions, either. All involve vague magic and characters reappearing in overly-convenient ways. Please let the last 3 be much much better than this... I've more or less been saving them to enjoy, because I understand it won't last forever. Now I have no interest in parsing them out - because, while reading this book - the notion of the series lasting forever was hell on Earth.
