Author: Keith R A DeCandido
Publisher: Plus One Press
Rating: WARTY!
I both started and finished this one today, and when I say I finished it, I didn't finish it. I read the very first chapter and decided that this was so uninventive and pedestrian that I had zero interest in reading any more (on the principle that life's way-the-hell too short).
The novel is about Cassie Zukav, a resident of Florida, who battles mythological creatures from Norse legend. It's first person PoV which I detest, so my feeling on starting it was that I wouldn't like it, and I'm sure that this contributed to my negative take on it. The first person is in the past tense, which ameliorates the style somewhat, but it's still 1PoV and it's all me, me, me, I, I , I, and that kind of self-aggrandizement sucks big ones on a cold day. It really does. Who cares how self-important Castor Zukav is?
Why did I even pick this up, knowing it was 1PoV? Well, I initially asked myself "How can I not like a novel with that title?!" and I found out pretty quickly the answer to that when I read that Cassie is a boring dive-tour guide in Florida who spends the majority of her nights drinking and listening to the same band at the same dive bar in the Keys. Why would I be even remotely interested in a completely one-dimensional character who was completely boring in three dimensions? As if that wasn't bad enough, the way Loki decides he's going to take over the world and bring on the new ice age is to form a band and play in a dinky little nowhere town in the Keys. Seriously?
The fact that, after learning all this, I still finished that one chapter is a compliment, believe me, but there was no way I was about to voluntarily read any more of this uninspiring and insipid drivel.
