Saturday, April 10, 2010

MR SHIVERS by Robert Jackson Bennett **

I'm half way thru this repetitive whatever it is. Some men gather on their travel in the seemingly 1800s or something to kill a scary guy called Mr. Shivers who has killed someone in their family. They pretty much ride the rails, meet hobos and anyone who met or mentions Mr. Shivers is scared shitless. Cuz he can cut up a dead pig and eats hearts?

Here's some repetition for you, one paragraph: "I know. I can see it. I can see it in you. It's eating you alive. That part. That part he took away from you, that part that was her. That empty part is just getting bigger. Eating you up."
Ad nauseum-seriously that's his modus operandi. On and on it goes as they battle their way behind the killer thru red sand storms, hobo battles, fights with each other, suicide, trainmen shooting at them..blahblah. So lets see, some serial murderer is on the prowl, everyone is trying to kill him, except police, and there is 300 pages of it.

It's too much nothing for me. Even tho there's death and destruction- the way it's written it's boring. The characters are left undescribed, so the writer can introduce little tidbits about who they love who died and how they died along the boring way out west but too little too late. I'm not engaged. I don't really care about anyone and it seems like he has filler characters so they can be dangled in front of you for a few pages before being slaughtered off in some disgusting manner. 

It's got enough pages of dialogue so you aren't bored to death with narrative but even the dialogue is vague and never really gets to any point. I've read much better and this could use some work. Published before ready? Pot smoker writer? For me...not working. 


So as I get closer to the end it's like a bad bloody dream. If you hate when someone tells you their dream then don't bother reading this it's a very long boring dream. Author has the word "shiver" all over the place. The guy they're chasing around is "death" with an entire page devoted to all the names he's called "Satan" etc. There's an undertone of religion, cults and crap like that. On one page describes a tattoo of a lizard, another changes it to a snake. Whatever! The monotony of chasing people, watching people die all bloody and running more and chasing each other around in the woods gets so tedious.



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