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ggallinot's review
1.0
DO NOT READ.
This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I only finished it because I wanted to give a fair review. Below are my reasons.
Writing: Shame on the editors. This book is riddled with dozens of spelling and grammar errors. DOZENS. It reads like a horrible first draft. Sometimes there’s multiple per page.
Treatment of women: Women in this book serve only as objects, plot devices, and tools for sexual perversion (beyond the actual story). Let’s review the women in the book:
1). About half the women are just sacrifices for Satan but here’s a breakdown of the main women in the book.
2). Meredith Brewster: The leader of the Satantic portion of the cult, she is a one-dimensional female portrayed as immensely naive and dumb to the motivations of her partners, who spend the majority of the text making fun and deriding her. There reasoning for keeping her in the cult are shaky at best and seem solely in the book to justify having a woman to beat up on.
3). Serena: Placed in the book just to be the female cop partner to Famelli. No arc or character just his lackey to move around for the plot.
4). Penny: Fiancé of Neville Pinnock. She is unrealistically jealous, accusing him of cheating on her SOLELY because he meets with his female students for office hours. She is portrayed as a shrew and illustrated as wicked for having trust issues… which turn out to be well-warranted since he DOES cheat on her. Because it’s such a stretch to dislike her after he does this, the author decides to make her part of the cult because ultimately, disliking her because she thinks someone will cheat on her that eventually does is ridiculous. The point is clear here: wash away the indiscretions of the man and demonize the woman by any means necessary.
5). Fiona: Our plucky protagonist. She has had a divorce and was encouraging her sister to do so as well because the men in their lives take advantage of them and cheat on them. Yet she finds it appropriate to join Neville in a shower (unprompted by him) and make a move on him despite the fact that he is engaged. This ruins all her credibility. At this point, neither are aware that Penny is part of the cult so they essentially homewreck because the feel like it.
Research: When professors are in a book they better sound like professors. It is clear no research was done into the fields the book explores. Professors sound like the first sentence of Wikipedia articles.
Treatment of the Occult: Wiccan bad! Atheism good! The treatment of the occult is amateurish in this book. If you have people in the book that are experts in the occult do your research! No practicing member of the occult is going to treat Satanism as human sacrifices on a blood altar. Since that’s only happening to appease resident expert Meredith, it is clear that no research was done. The book works hard to make Meredith appear well read in these arts but ultimately she winds up just being the type of evil, dark Satanist that live in the minds of children.
Plot: Lazy, lazy, lazy. The two main characters meet because Fiona thinks Drey’s murder is the most similar to her sister’s that she can find in recent years. The similarities? NONE. Her sister is ruled a suicide and Drey’s a murder hours away. The only overlap is neither had a convicted killer. Yeah… living in New York, there’s NO cold cases in the last five years? Right. Fiona thinks the killer is her sister’s husband and has no reason at this point to think it’s anything either than his wanting to lord over her. Why even go searching for similar cases at this point? It makes no sense. It’s insulting to ask us to believe this sort of connection is at all tenable.
The Dark Web: This book says it’s about the Dark Web but it barely touches on it and deals with it WRONG. Live feeds are being filmed of the sacrifices and the leaders are excited for all the downloads. This is not how the dark web works at all. It’s treated like some basement website but it’s way more complicated then that so if you’re going to predicate the success of an organization on it’s dark web presence maybe explain HOW they’re doing things that can’t be done or reconfigure your strategy. Dark web stories have a lot of potential and this one fails utterly.
This book is an insult to readers, clearly published only because it’s author is a big name. Skip it.
This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I only finished it because I wanted to give a fair review. Below are my reasons.
Writing: Shame on the editors. This book is riddled with dozens of spelling and grammar errors. DOZENS. It reads like a horrible first draft. Sometimes there’s multiple per page.
Treatment of women: Women in this book serve only as objects, plot devices, and tools for sexual perversion (beyond the actual story). Let’s review the women in the book:
1). About half the women are just sacrifices for Satan but here’s a breakdown of the main women in the book.
2). Meredith Brewster: The leader of the Satantic portion of the cult, she is a one-dimensional female portrayed as immensely naive and dumb to the motivations of her partners, who spend the majority of the text making fun and deriding her. There reasoning for keeping her in the cult are shaky at best and seem solely in the book to justify having a woman to beat up on.
3). Serena: Placed in the book just to be the female cop partner to Famelli. No arc or character just his lackey to move around for the plot.
4). Penny: Fiancé of Neville Pinnock. She is unrealistically jealous, accusing him of cheating on her SOLELY because he meets with his female students for office hours. She is portrayed as a shrew and illustrated as wicked for having trust issues… which turn out to be well-warranted since he DOES cheat on her. Because it’s such a stretch to dislike her after he does this, the author decides to make her part of the cult because ultimately, disliking her because she thinks someone will cheat on her that eventually does is ridiculous. The point is clear here: wash away the indiscretions of the man and demonize the woman by any means necessary.
5). Fiona: Our plucky protagonist. She has had a divorce and was encouraging her sister to do so as well because the men in their lives take advantage of them and cheat on them. Yet she finds it appropriate to join Neville in a shower (unprompted by him) and make a move on him despite the fact that he is engaged. This ruins all her credibility. At this point, neither are aware that Penny is part of the cult so they essentially homewreck because the feel like it.
Research: When professors are in a book they better sound like professors. It is clear no research was done into the fields the book explores. Professors sound like the first sentence of Wikipedia articles.
Treatment of the Occult: Wiccan bad! Atheism good! The treatment of the occult is amateurish in this book. If you have people in the book that are experts in the occult do your research! No practicing member of the occult is going to treat Satanism as human sacrifices on a blood altar. Since that’s only happening to appease resident expert Meredith, it is clear that no research was done. The book works hard to make Meredith appear well read in these arts but ultimately she winds up just being the type of evil, dark Satanist that live in the minds of children.
Plot: Lazy, lazy, lazy. The two main characters meet because Fiona thinks Drey’s murder is the most similar to her sister’s that she can find in recent years. The similarities? NONE. Her sister is ruled a suicide and Drey’s a murder hours away. The only overlap is neither had a convicted killer. Yeah… living in New York, there’s NO cold cases in the last five years? Right. Fiona thinks the killer is her sister’s husband and has no reason at this point to think it’s anything either than his wanting to lord over her. Why even go searching for similar cases at this point? It makes no sense. It’s insulting to ask us to believe this sort of connection is at all tenable.
The Dark Web: This book says it’s about the Dark Web but it barely touches on it and deals with it WRONG. Live feeds are being filmed of the sacrifices and the leaders are excited for all the downloads. This is not how the dark web works at all. It’s treated like some basement website but it’s way more complicated then that so if you’re going to predicate the success of an organization on it’s dark web presence maybe explain HOW they’re doing things that can’t be done or reconfigure your strategy. Dark web stories have a lot of potential and this one fails utterly.
This book is an insult to readers, clearly published only because it’s author is a big name. Skip it.
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