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B+ review in EW - fpw - 10-15-2007
[SIZE="3"]Highly quotable mini-review in the current Entertainment Weekly. Here’s the whole thing:
“Private eye Jack - just Jack - is hired by a distraught mother to to investigate the skeevy older guy dating her daughter. See, the first PI she hired has disappeared. But when Jack finds his predecessor tortured and drowned in a bathtub, he embarks on a harrowing journey involving murder, an anarchist movement, genetic engineering and a suspicious mental institution. In his 11th Repairman Jack thriller, Wilson offers a canny mix of sci-fi paranoia and criminal mayhem. Despite a contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel, Bloodline starts fast, keeps the accelerator down, and defies you to stop reading. B+ - Bob Cannon”
About that “contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel”…he’s not the first to mention it. And he has a point. Maybe you felt that way too. Here’s my problem: I’m into the end game of the series. I’m putting the pieces and the players into place. I’ve got long arcs (4 books or so) that have to flow through in order to pay off at the end. The only “straining” I’m doing is trying to tie up each book into a stand-alone. But try as I might, it’s not happening. The arcs are too big and too important to abridge. So you’re going to have to bear with me here. I don’t like it, but the story demands it. In the end, I think/hope you’ll agree it was worth the frustration. But trust me, I’m not teasing for teasing sake. It’s do it this way, or make you sit and wait four years for a 2000-page novel.[/SIZE]
B+ review in EW - Biggles - 10-15-2007
fpw Wrote:[SIZE="3"]It’s do it this way, or make you sit and wait four years for a 2000-page novel.[/SIZE]
Well, I'm OK with that too. Any way you want to do it is fine with us. (Can I have an "Amen" here?) When it gets down to it, why mess with success? Considering how it's worked so far, you don't want to change your master plan (kinda sounds like Blofeld or Dr. Evil, doesn't it?).
B+ review in EW - beowulf - 10-15-2007
Waiting 4 years isn't an option...but a 2000 page Jack novel sounds awesome!
B+ review in EW - Sourdoughs - 10-15-2007
Interesting. I've never had a problem with how these novels end. I consider them as one long story, not stand-alone books, much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy is really one long book. Doesn't seem like Mr. Cannon saw it that way, but I can't see why when it's the 11th book now.
-MarcC
B+ review in EW - webby - 10-16-2007
I did feel that Bloodline had an almost visible "To Be Continued" at the end, but I didn't think of it as a particularly bad thing. It just keeps the excitement level up while we anxiously await the next episode.
As for "contrived" - no. I did not think anything about the end was contrived. It all made perfect sense when you look at it in terms of the series overall. Maybe someone not familiar with the larger themes could see it differently, but it rang true for me.
Finally, I just have to say that following the Repairman Jack series is not at all frustrating. Sure, there's a year of anticipation between books and each book seems to raise as many questions as it answers, but that's the FUN of it! And a year between installments is really not so long to wait.
I can't help but draw a comparison to Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I read Book 1 of that series when my daughter was just a toddler. She was practically graduated from high school by the time the final book was released - and that series is only 6 books long. I invested 15 years in waiting for the end of that long story arc - and don't even get me started on how it ended after all that time! Talk about frustration! Gaaahh!
The worst part was that Book 3 (The Wastelands) ended with a HUGE cliffhanger and it was six years before Book 4 was published! SIX YEARS!!! Gaaaahhhh!
Paul - you just keep doing what you're doing. The books are wonderful and we wouldn't want you to compromise the overall story to try to fit somebody else's idea of what the individual books of a series should be. Besides - having already read both versions of Nightworld I know you aren't going to disappoint us in the end, so the waiting is all that much easier to take.
B+ review in EW - Miranda - 10-16-2007
Amen.
"the story demands it." Yes, it does and it's working!
The book was A to A+ quality, imo, and I didn't notice anything contrived about the ending. It worked, period. Things were satisfactorily concluded in keeping with the usual character and actions of the protagonist. Any other way would have made Jack seem like a stranger. There were surprises and twists, but Jack still acted like Jack. You delivered a good book, don't sweat the somewhat lukewarm review.
The review itself, however, rates a B-.
B+ review in EW - Paul R - 10-16-2007
Way back on the old board, I remember saying that I thought the Repairman Jack books wouldn't be so easy to dip into if you're not already committed to them. And I believe that still seems to be the case. With Bloodline, I thought the ending did cry out that a sequel was coming, certainly more than any other Jack book.
Was it a bad ending? No way.
Was it a contrived ending? Certainly not. But I can see how an unfamiliar reader could think so.
And I think that's the problem the reviewer had. He wasn't a committed reader of the series and so the ending came across as contrived. Not because it was contrived but because he didn't know the whole story.
Speaking as a Jack fan, I love that the books end with plenty of questions still to be answered. I know I'm here for the long term and I know that I'll be buying the next book. But I can imagine that a new or unfamiliar reader would be left out in the cold.
Just my two cents/pennies.
B+ review in EW - phoenix rising - 10-16-2007
It just goes to show that the people writing the reviews should be familiar with all the previous books.
I can wait as long as it takes for the next book, I can find plenty to keep me busy till then!
(won't say I'll enjoy the wait, just have plenty to help keep my mind off of the wait)
B+ review in EW - Sigokat - 10-16-2007
Who gives a damn what some punk from EW (very reputable source for sure) says? B+??? Bah..I haven't even read Bloodline yet and I'm sure its better then a B+!! Infernal is next on my list, btw.
FPW, You want me to take this guy out for you??? No charge of course.
B+ review in EW - Fenian1916 - 10-16-2007
Amen, amen,amen. The guy should read the entire series before he can give an accurate review. If he knew the story in it's entirety he'd have a better grasp and could give nothing but an A+. I let everyone that will listen know all about Jack and have gotten several people hooked and one aspect a lot of people like is the pieces that fit into a larger story.