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A review by alexauthorshay
Curfew by Phil Rickman
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
How long this book took me to read is indicator enough to me how I felt about it. I only bothered to finish this at all because it was a buddy read and I was intrigued just enough to keep reading. Which didn't stop me from putting it down and reading several other books in between (twice); the writing style itself was so off-putting I needed a break from that more than the story.
This is definitely the traditional 90's horror novel; large cast of characters, a lot of head hopping, very shallow character development and no depth to any characters, lots of stated feelings and -ly adverbs. Rickman's book bothered me more than most I've read from this era because he used probably 10 adverbs per page and many of them made no sense, ex. "fell massively into the crowd", and the similes and metaphors he used didn't really make much sense either. I actively disliked or was disinterested in every single character put on the page, couldn't get into any of their heads enough to understand anything they did (though I had several moments of 'this feels OOC for this person'), and could hardly keep track of who was who because it's a small town where several people have the same last name because they're related. Trying to keep track of what generation each character was from and how they were related to the other characters was harder to follow than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Each character also sounded the same beyond the accent/no accent and the similes used in both narration and dialogue were the same regardless of the POV character/character that was speaking.
Rickman has a habit of writing sentences without a subject, ex "Slinking down the walls." I used to do this but always got corrected by anyone who read my work, and it actually kind of throws me off to read it from other writers now. He also uses very short segments such that a single chapter might have 10-15 sections from 6 - 8 different characters and each section is less than a page, which didn't make it feel fast paced like a thriller, but rather like I wasn't allowed to settle in with any one character, to the point that I honestly can't tell you who the protagonist was.
Maybe because I took so many breaks and they were quite long but it felt like 80% or more of the real paranormal stuff happened in the last 50 pages (my copy was 625 pages) and at least 50% of the book could have been chopped out with no detrimental effects. Horror books generally take a while to build up but this felt like a total flatline until 50%, then a small spike, and then out the cieling at 80%. Too much was figured out/put together at last minute to make it satisfying. Maybe I timed my second break very badly but it seemed they went from knowing nothing in one chapter to figuring out everything in the next.And I think Warren needed way more page time to be the real villain of the book. It felt like ‘here’s this demonic little shit disturber joker for ambiance’ and then 20 pages from the end ‘jk he’s the bad guy’.
I'm only not giving it one star because some of the elements of Crybbe itself and the paranormal happenings that occur there were things I haven't encountered in that form/way in a horror novel before (which is not to say I liked them or though they were done well, but I have to give points for originality that I haven't found copied by other authors since then).
This is definitely the traditional 90's horror novel; large cast of characters, a lot of head hopping, very shallow character development and no depth to any characters, lots of stated feelings and -ly adverbs. Rickman's book bothered me more than most I've read from this era because he used probably 10 adverbs per page and many of them made no sense, ex. "fell massively into the crowd", and the similes and metaphors he used didn't really make much sense either. I actively disliked or was disinterested in every single character put on the page, couldn't get into any of their heads enough to understand anything they did (though I had several moments of 'this feels OOC for this person'), and could hardly keep track of who was who because it's a small town where several people have the same last name because they're related. Trying to keep track of what generation each character was from and how they were related to the other characters was harder to follow than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Each character also sounded the same beyond the accent/no accent and the similes used in both narration and dialogue were the same regardless of the POV character/character that was speaking.
Rickman has a habit of writing sentences without a subject, ex "Slinking down the walls." I used to do this but always got corrected by anyone who read my work, and it actually kind of throws me off to read it from other writers now. He also uses very short segments such that a single chapter might have 10-15 sections from 6 - 8 different characters and each section is less than a page, which didn't make it feel fast paced like a thriller, but rather like I wasn't allowed to settle in with any one character, to the point that I honestly can't tell you who the protagonist was.
Maybe because I took so many breaks and they were quite long but it felt like 80% or more of the real paranormal stuff happened in the last 50 pages (my copy was 625 pages) and at least 50% of the book could have been chopped out with no detrimental effects. Horror books generally take a while to build up but this felt like a total flatline until 50%, then a small spike, and then out the cieling at 80%. Too much was figured out/put together at last minute to make it satisfying. Maybe I timed my second break very badly but it seemed they went from knowing nothing in one chapter to figuring out everything in the next.
I'm only not giving it one star because some of the elements of Crybbe itself and the paranormal happenings that occur there were things I haven't encountered in that form/way in a horror novel before (which is not to say I liked them or though they were done well, but I have to give points for originality that I haven't found copied by other authors since then).