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A review by billymac1962
Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell
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.