Review: Not up to her usual standards
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 20, 2014
It's very slow getting off the ground -- no sense of suspense or mystery for about the first 2/3 of the book. There's some artificially-induced tension early on but it's via what felt like a cheap trick to me. There are annoying editorial issues -- noun/adjective combinations that are contradictions in terms (e.g., a 'loud chuckle', when a chuckle is quiet, soft by definition), extra unneeded commas scattered about like they were coming out of a salt shaker, and over-used turns of phrase. I thought if one more character "twisted" their faces into some expression or leveled another character with a look (and probably, to be correct, one levels a look at another) I would scream. New characters are not allowed to develop but their whole appearances and personalities get dumped on us in one long paragraph in their first scene (the chief coroner being the main examplar of this problem). It's written from an omniscient point of view which comes close to head-hopping in some scenes and it's part of why there's no sense of mystery -- we know exactly who did what to whom, in most cases, from the very beginning. And I had quibbles with her portrayal of meditation, which does not square with my experience of it: That made me question how carefully she researched the factual background to her story.It just felt lazy to me. Only in the last 20% or so did it get rolling, and more enjoyable. Even so, when I thought about the story later, I found myself rejecting certain plot twists or characters' actions as unbelievable. All in all, for a Miller fan who's thoroughly enjoyed previous books in the series, this one was a big disappointment.