whazzle: metal stars of various sizes (Default)
2013-01-17 07:19 pm
Entry tags:

(finished) The Raw Shark Texts - Stephen Hall

The Raw Shark Texts

Christmas present from my bro - along with John Dies at the End (not yet read); fast read but a bit underwhelming. It had a lot of cool moments and ideas, but a lot of failures as well. It's also a book that is trying, metatextually, really REALLY hard to be cool, in a cult sort of way. Which automatically makes me side-eye it a bit.

Things I liked: the cat, the inn characters, the Nobody scene - suitably creepy, the letter-map, Scout, the lair type place, the Ludovician.

Things I didn't like: the protagonist, the plot, a lot of the writing (seriously! needed an editor to tighten certain things up, such as using ten words when one would do, god).

It was a bit of a frustrating book because it felt like it could have been awesome and amazing and mind-blowing, but instead it just... wasn't. Also dude really needs to learn how to write women in a way that is not kind of creepy. Written in the way that makes you think he doesn't realize he is being creepy. But he is. Not quite misogyny - but nice-guy-ism? Is that still a catch-all phrase? Well, whatever.

Could definitely tell the Murakami influence, but nowhere close to the Murakami feel. Like a cheap knockoff.

Not on the re-read list.