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scorpion_221's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
telemanusjellybeanco's review against another edition
5.0
5/5 ⭐️. I cannot put into words how much I love this novel. At over 800 pages (30 hours on audio) this is an epic saga if I’ve ever read one. This book is a combination of family saga, Southern gothic, and horror. The book begins in 1919, in Perdido, Alabama. A flood has just decimated the town, and Oscar Caskey runs across a woman stranded in the local hotel. What follows is a story of love, hate, revenge and family, with a little bit of superbly creepy horror sprinkled throughout. This is the second time I have listened to this book. Both times, I balled my eyes out when it was over. I want a tv series now!
billymac1962's review against another edition
4.0
Overall, I'm giving the series 4 stars, and a short review.
From the onset, the Blackwater series was right up my alley: southern family saga, and for a bit of fun, throw a swamp monster into the mix.
The series had some ebbs and flows for me. Book one was a very strong start, and through book three, the family story was quite interesting. Of course, the most interesting thing was the anticipation of how this was all going to pan out. Which is why this didn't maintain the 5 star status I had going for the first half of the series.
I found book four to be quite slow and dull, but thankfully things got interesting again through book 5.
Book 6: This is where my disappointment came into play. While I did like the overall ending of the book, it sure took a long time to get there. Even though this, as the others, was under 200 pages, I found a lot of it to be a slog and I was impatient to finish.
This may be due to the fact that I read all six novels back-to-back, when perhaps it would have been more effective to space these out in the spirit a serialized series is meant to be.
Regardless, I did what I did, and found the journey to the end a bit too long in the tooth.
As a side note, a few thoughts occurred to me while reading the series:
This would make an incredible TV series.
The writing reminded me a lot of Jeffery Archer's style (note, I've only read one book of his, but...) : while I became very familiar with the characters, I didn't find there was a whole lot of depth to many of them. Familiarity was gained by exposure to them and how the story carried them along. The characters that were fleshed out better were known through dialogue, which, at times, was where McDowell really excelled.
Having said that, there were times when the narrative really shined, and these were the creepier (and most integral) parts of the story.
So, the four stars here is indicative of the strength of story idea, dialogue, and creepy parts that will take a while to forget.
It's too bad I was disappointed with some of the pacing, but no regrets overall.
From the onset, the Blackwater series was right up my alley: southern family saga, and for a bit of fun, throw a swamp monster into the mix.
The series had some ebbs and flows for me. Book one was a very strong start, and through book three, the family story was quite interesting. Of course, the most interesting thing was the anticipation of how this was all going to pan out. Which is why this didn't maintain the 5 star status I had going for the first half of the series.
I found book four to be quite slow and dull, but thankfully things got interesting again through book 5.
Book 6: This is where my disappointment came into play. While I did like the overall ending of the book, it sure took a long time to get there. Even though this, as the others, was under 200 pages, I found a lot of it to be a slog and I was impatient to finish.
This may be due to the fact that I read all six novels back-to-back, when perhaps it would have been more effective to space these out in the spirit a serialized series is meant to be.
Regardless, I did what I did, and found the journey to the end a bit too long in the tooth.
As a side note, a few thoughts occurred to me while reading the series:
This would make an incredible TV series.
The writing reminded me a lot of Jeffery Archer's style (note, I've only read one book of his, but...) : while I became very familiar with the characters, I didn't find there was a whole lot of depth to many of them. Familiarity was gained by exposure to them and how the story carried them along. The characters that were fleshed out better were known through dialogue, which, at times, was where McDowell really excelled.
Having said that, there were times when the narrative really shined, and these were the creepier (and most integral) parts of the story.
So, the four stars here is indicative of the strength of story idea, dialogue, and creepy parts that will take a while to forget.
It's too bad I was disappointed with some of the pacing, but no regrets overall.
defaultnamespace's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
It is slow and the horror elements are sparse, so not something I'd normally be interested in. It's also very long. More like a sprawling southern soap opera with some horror elements thrown in. And I was completely hooked. I never thought I'd become so invested in the day to day drama of a family, and a story spanning 50 years. I didn't want it to end.
When the horror does show up, it's in full force and doesn't hold back, made all the more powerful because of the investment in the characters. The writing is masterful and the narration excellent.
Simply put, it's unlike anything I've ever read.
When the horror does show up, it's in full force and doesn't hold back, made all the more powerful because of the investment in the characters. The writing is masterful and the narration excellent.
Simply put, it's unlike anything I've ever read.
michellesmelancholia's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
gatun's review against another edition
5.0
Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell runs just over 30 hours. That is large even in audiobook circles. But it is worth every moment of it. Matt Godfrey does an incredible job. The story includes males, females, and children. The accents, for the most part, are southern Alabama. The differences in wealth, education, and race are apparent by the accents Mr. Godfrey creates for them. I had no problem identifying who was speaking.
Blackwater: The Complete Saga is categorized as Southern Gothic and horror. It is a complex, rich story, not only because it covers a time period from 1919 to the late 1960s. The main characters, Oscar and Eleanor, meet during the worst flood ever recorded in Perdido, Alabama. Oscar rescues Eleanor from a hotel room where she has been trapped for four days due to the rising water. The mystery of how Eleanor came to be in that hotel room when the rest of the town was evacuated is not solved until the end.
I know I am not doing this book justice. Without spoilers, I can tell you there are two monsters who bring very, very different horrors to Oscar's family. There is also a love story that is simple and also very strong. There is a hate created of jealousy, pettiness, and narcissism. There are innocent children trapped in this world of two monsters.
The audiobook is excellent. I will listen to it again. I really enjoyed Michael McDowell's The Elementals as an audiobook. My next listen by him is Glittering Needles.
Performance 5 stars; Story 5 stars; Production values 5 stars; Overall 5 stars
Blackwater: The Complete Saga is categorized as Southern Gothic and horror. It is a complex, rich story, not only because it covers a time period from 1919 to the late 1960s. The main characters, Oscar and Eleanor, meet during the worst flood ever recorded in Perdido, Alabama. Oscar rescues Eleanor from a hotel room where she has been trapped for four days due to the rising water. The mystery of how Eleanor came to be in that hotel room when the rest of the town was evacuated is not solved until the end.
I know I am not doing this book justice. Without spoilers, I can tell you there are two monsters who bring very, very different horrors to Oscar's family. There is also a love story that is simple and also very strong. There is a hate created of jealousy, pettiness, and narcissism. There are innocent children trapped in this world of two monsters.
The audiobook is excellent. I will listen to it again. I really enjoyed Michael McDowell's The Elementals as an audiobook. My next listen by him is Glittering Needles.
Performance 5 stars; Story 5 stars; Production values 5 stars; Overall 5 stars
sandygx260's review against another edition
5.0
Back in the 1980's, I read the Blackwater Saga and absolutely loved it—I read it twice. I urged it on my friends. I made the mistake of lending the six book set to a friend who was fired from where we worked and abruptly moved back home to New York. You don't ask a friend who has been fired to return your books.
Over the years, I kept thinking about the series. I finally bit the bullet and paid entirely too much money for a battered set on eBay. The next read proved to be as intriguing and bizarre as I remembered.
Last week I was poking around Kindle books on Amazon and saw that the Blackwater Saga was on Kindle. I snapped it right up and raced through it again.
With the Blackwater Saga, McDowell crafted one helluva of a fascinating Southern Gothic tale. The saga features jealousy, passion, hatred, murder, avarice, and a calculating female river monster who occasionally eats people as the heroine. I have never read anything quite like Blackwater. It feels as if McDowell decided to write a Southern Gothic about a powerful family living in Alabama and threw in a river monster.
When I finished, tears came to my eyes because I wanted more! The ending is powerful.
Now I want ro re-read McDowell's amazing The Elementals, a truly frightening book featuring an abandoned house, heat, and sand. Once you read this book, you'll never regard sand as benign.
I will add this—McDowell was gay. I certainly didn't know this when I read his novels, but now I do see his exploration of "outsider" characters in his novels.
Over the years, I kept thinking about the series. I finally bit the bullet and paid entirely too much money for a battered set on eBay. The next read proved to be as intriguing and bizarre as I remembered.
Last week I was poking around Kindle books on Amazon and saw that the Blackwater Saga was on Kindle. I snapped it right up and raced through it again.
With the Blackwater Saga, McDowell crafted one helluva of a fascinating Southern Gothic tale. The saga features jealousy, passion, hatred, murder, avarice, and a calculating female river monster who occasionally eats people as the heroine. I have never read anything quite like Blackwater. It feels as if McDowell decided to write a Southern Gothic about a powerful family living in Alabama and threw in a river monster.
When I finished, tears came to my eyes because I wanted more! The ending is powerful.
Now I want ro re-read McDowell's amazing The Elementals, a truly frightening book featuring an abandoned house, heat, and sand. Once you read this book, you'll never regard sand as benign.
I will add this—McDowell was gay. I certainly didn't know this when I read his novels, but now I do see his exploration of "outsider" characters in his novels.
mialeyden's review against another edition
I got this book after hearing Stephen King fans would like it, I didn’t feel that way myself. I hoped the family drama and the horror would eventually balance, but that was unfortunately not the case. It took me three months to slowly reach the end of the second part. I think I’ll just leave it there and move on. Not enjoying my time with this.
alexandrabree's review
3.0
I couldn't decide all the way through if this was a magnum opus or a long-winded short story.
I really was into the first book, and then got into the family drama and development, but there was just a little too much mystery, a little too much that was never quite explained, the pacing was very slow and I think if I had put thr book down I could easily have just walked away from it and never picked it up to finish at any point.
I think if this is your cup of tea, then it is probably a 10/10 stars but it was a 4/10 for me in the end, I don't quite regret reading it and spending so much time with it.
BUT I totally could have done with more everything, more gore, more explanations, more alligator people, more action, more drama (so much slow burn that just smoulders, and smoulders and smoulders)
I really was into the first book, and then got into the family drama and development, but there was just a little too much mystery, a little too much that was never quite explained, the pacing was very slow and I think if I had put thr book down I could easily have just walked away from it and never picked it up to finish at any point.
I think if this is your cup of tea, then it is probably a 10/10 stars but it was a 4/10 for me in the end, I don't quite regret reading it and spending so much time with it.
BUT I totally could have done with more everything, more gore, more explanations, more alligator people, more action, more drama (so much slow burn that just smoulders, and smoulders and smoulders)