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A review by mollymortensen
Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older
3.0
I love a wise cracking main character. This book is unique because Carlos has amnesia of his living life. (He died three years ago.) But instead of becoming a shade he's an in-betweener, which comes with some cool and unique powers.
This book is a bit too mature for me. Mostly, I was just annoyed by all the swearing but there are a few brief sex scenes and some gruesome violence towards the end.
There's not really any romance. It's basically love at first sight, then he sleeps with her a couple of times and is in love. The readers know their relationship is doomed, because he's lying to her the whole time and when she discovers the truth it's not going to be good. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. But it wasn't like I cared because we knew literally nothing about her.
That's the problem when so many characters have amnesia and my main issue with Carlos as a protagonist. He starts out not caring about absolutely anything and he remains rather apathetic throughout. Maybe that's what the author was going for, but his characterization was as dead as he was.
So many parts of this book had the potential to be great, but they were just okay. The world building was complex and interesting and the characters sound good on paper (haha) but they felt flat. We don't get to know any of them enough for me to care about anyone.
The mystery was okay. Watching Carlos track down the clues and piece it together wasn't bad. There were some twists at the end but they were entirely predictable.
The ending was disappointing, dark, and depressing. The big battle was too long and horrible, then defeating the bad guy was too easy. (He attempted a unique twist for how to defeat the big bad but it still felt anticlimactic.)
Will I read another book in this series? No, and I might not read another book by this author. His ideas have potential but I didn't like the execution.
Spoiler
I wish he hadn't made such a big deal about being the only in-betweener, because right away we learn there are others, which totally ruins his special-ness. (It's like all the modern superhero movies where there's an evil version of themselves.) It would just highlight his cool powers better if everyone didn't have the exact same abilities.This book is a bit too mature for me. Mostly, I was just annoyed by all the swearing but there are a few brief sex scenes and some gruesome violence towards the end.
There's not really any romance. It's basically love at first sight, then he sleeps with her a couple of times and is in love. The readers know their relationship is doomed, because he's lying to her the whole time and when she discovers the truth it's not going to be good. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. But it wasn't like I cared because we knew literally nothing about her.
That's the problem when so many characters have amnesia and my main issue with Carlos as a protagonist. He starts out not caring about absolutely anything and he remains rather apathetic throughout. Maybe that's what the author was going for, but his characterization was as dead as he was.
So many parts of this book had the potential to be great, but they were just okay. The world building was complex and interesting and the characters sound good on paper (haha) but they felt flat. We don't get to know any of them enough for me to care about anyone.
The mystery was okay. Watching Carlos track down the clues and piece it together wasn't bad. There were some twists at the end but they were entirely predictable.
The ending was disappointing, dark, and depressing. The big battle was too long and horrible, then defeating the bad guy was too easy. (He attempted a unique twist for how to defeat the big bad but it still felt anticlimactic.)
Will I read another book in this series? No, and I might not read another book by this author. His ideas have potential but I didn't like the execution.