Author: Alis Franklin
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
This novel is about IT guy Sigmund, a somewhat overweight, rather nerdy geek who falls for Lain, your standard Norse god character - who actually is a Norse god. So good so far, but in the end I could not keep reading this and cannot recommend it based on the first ten chapters which is as far as I got before giving up.
My issues with it were several, not least of which was that it bored me. It wasn't so much that it was slowly going nowhere as it was that it didn't even look like it was going anywhere. The pacing was painfully slow, slow, slow, with nothing of real note happening for page after page.
Sigmund was a bit of a caricature of your standard nerd/geek. I know there are people like that, but in a novel I really want to read about someone who has at least something to recommend him (or her) and there was nothing here - nothing to make him stand out as someone I would like to get to know better. He quite literally was a cliché, which did not make him attractive to me. This effect was deepened by the fact that he was so unmotivated and so backward for someone who is supposed to be smart.
I get that people can be genuinely conflicted about sexuality, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's normal for most people regardless of what gender or orientation they feel they have or might have. The problem with Sigmund was that he was so utterly clueless that I honestly started wondering how on Earth he'd managed to live this long, let alone get through college, and secure and hold down a job. That doesn't make him appealing at all, especially since he doesn't even seem to be moving towards a change after around a third of the novel has gone by.
That's actually not even the most problematical part of this novel. The problem is Lain, the love interest. And yes, I get that he has gorgeously glowing golden/copper hair. Enough already! To begin with, it's not even remotely apparent why Lain - who also is the head of the very corporation for which Sigmund works in the IT department - has chosen to "go undercover" as the new guy in IT, with whom Sigmund happens to be buddied, and it doesn't become apparent at least one third the way through. Enough with the mystery - I want to learn at least something about motive or agenda by this point.
I kept expecting something to happen, or some revelation to pop up, but nothing actually did. Not in ten chapters. The two main characters slow-danced around each other without touching and with neither seeming to have any purpose, drive, or direction. It was like they hardly even registered on each other's radar despite being buddied together. Ponderous!
It was really hard for me to see why Lain would even do this. In the first ten chapters there were really no hints. I kept waiting for his inner god to show, and to reveal some purpose for his elaborate deception of Sigmund, but things seemed far more likely to expire than transpire. I saw no purpose to him impersonating an IT guy or why he would facilitate partnering Sigmund on the annual corporate camping trip either - where again nothing happened other than that the two of them got lost briefly. Lain's motives are completely obscure. He just hanging around and saying things like "Sounds fun!" when he's asked to go to the coffee shop. Sounds fun? Honestly? A trip for a cup of coffee is his idea of a riotous time? It was at that point where I quit, because it wasn't fun, nor did this novel feel to me like it ever would be.
