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modernzorker's review
3.0
While it's not what I'd consider a "hidden gem" of horror or anything like that, Mark Manley's Throwback is a fine example of a competently-written piece of what I'll call "bedroom candy", a book that you can sit in bed, read, and enjoy without feeling like you've been ripped off. It won't set your hair on fire or change your life, but it's short and tells a fine story at a good pace. Sometimes that's all you need.
These are the books you won't see on the shelves today. It used to be that the top-tiered authors (King, Roberts, Clancy, Grisham, etc...) were so successful that publishers could gamble some of their earnings on publishing and promoting their mid-listers, allowing their less-successful and less-frequent authors to still earn a living at their craft while editorial gatekeeping ensured that (most of) the trash never made it into print.
Today we have indie publishing with no gate keepers on one side of the aisle, and on the other side publishers throwing everything they can into churning out books with James Patterson's name on the cover. In today's market, there's no room for the Mark Manleys on store shelves, as razor-thin profit margins and the rise of the enormous online second-hand market have squeezed that stone dry.
It's a shame, because books about hideous, mutant rats growing out of menopausal women's spinal columns are a genre woefully unrepresented, but there you have it.
These are the books you won't see on the shelves today. It used to be that the top-tiered authors (King, Roberts, Clancy, Grisham, etc...) were so successful that publishers could gamble some of their earnings on publishing and promoting their mid-listers, allowing their less-successful and less-frequent authors to still earn a living at their craft while editorial gatekeeping ensured that (most of) the trash never made it into print.
Today we have indie publishing with no gate keepers on one side of the aisle, and on the other side publishers throwing everything they can into churning out books with James Patterson's name on the cover. In today's market, there's no room for the Mark Manleys on store shelves, as razor-thin profit margins and the rise of the enormous online second-hand market have squeezed that stone dry.
It's a shame, because books about hideous, mutant rats growing out of menopausal women's spinal columns are a genre woefully unrepresented, but there you have it.
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